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Impacts of Future Climate, Emission, and Land Use Changes on Aerosols and Air Quality over the Continental
Citation:
Campbell, P., J. Bash, Chris Nolte, T. Spero, E. Cooter, AND H. Pye. Impacts of Future Climate, Emission, and Land Use Changes on Aerosols and Air Quality over the Continental. 2017 AAAR Annual Conference, Raleigh, NC, October 16 - 20, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
A “one atmosphere” modeling system consisting of the WRF (Weather Research and Forecast) model used with the CMAQ (Community Multiscale Air Quality) model, and linked to agricultural cropping management and soil biogeochemical processes in the EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate) model, is used to simulate emissions, dynamic air-surface exchange of trace gases and aerosols, gas-phase chemistry, secondary aerosol formation, transport, and deposition to explore the interactions between air quality, land use, climate and emissions.
Description:
Changes in climate, emission, and land use in the U.S. over the next century are imminent. The response of geologic, biogenic, and anthropogenic aerosol to interactions between these changes, however, are more uncertain and difficult to quantify. To explore these interactions, a “one atmosphere” modeling system consisting of the WRF (Weather Research and Forecast) model used with the CMAQ (Community Multiscale Air Quality) model, and linked to agricultural cropping management and soil biogeochemical processes in the EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate) model, is used to simulate emissions, dynamic air-surface exchange of trace gases and aerosols, gas-phase chemistry, secondary aerosol formation, transport, and deposition. Significant advancements have been incorporated into the latest aerosol module in CMAQ that include updates to organic and inorganic aerosol formation and properties, as well as an improved physics-based windblown dust parameterization. To consistently represent climate, land use, and air quality changes in this work, we modify WRF version 3.8.1 to improve its linkage to CMAQ version 5.2, and apply the advanced and modified WRF/Noah-CMAQ-EPIC system to dynamically downscaled Community Earth System Model (CESM) climate simulations, regional emission projections, and regional land use changes to study the impacts on aerosol formation and concentration, and ultimately the potential future of U.S. air quality by 2045 - 2055 under the RCP4.5 scenario. Specifically, we explore the changes in (1) inorganic aerosol formation regimes (e.g., in response to ammonia- vs. nitrate-limited regime changes), (2) organic aerosol formation and concentration changes (e.g., in response to biogenic volatile organic compound emission changes), and (3) windblown dust concentrations (e.g., in response to soil moisture and land use changes). We aim to relate the sensitivity of changes in (1) – (3) to their dominant climate, emission, and land use impacts to help provide insight into beneficial air quality management and mitigation strategies in the future.
