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Dynamic Evaluation of Two Decades of CMAQ Simulations over the Continental United States (book chapter)
Citation:
Astitha, M., H. Luo, S. Rao, C. Hogrefe, R. Mathur, AND N. Kumar. Dynamic Evaluation of Two Decades of CMAQ Simulations over the Continental United States (book chapter). Chapter 3, Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XXV. Springer International Publishing AG, Cham (ZG), Switzerland, , 19-24, (2017).
Impact/Purpose:
Current developments in air pollution modelling are explored as a series of contributions from researchers at the forefront of their field. This newest contribution on air pollution modelling and its application is focused on local, urban, regional and intercontinental modelling; long term modelling and trend analysis; data assimilation and air quality forecasting; model assessment and evaluation; aerosol transformation. Additionally, this work also examines the relationship between air quality and human health and the effects of climate change on air quality. This Work is a part of a collection of selected papers presented at the 35th International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modeling and its Application, held in Chania (Crete), Greece, Oct 3-7, 2016.
Description:
This paper focuses on dynamic evaluation of the CMAQ model over the continental United States using multi-decadal simulations for the period from 1990 to 2010 to examine how well the changes in observed ozone air quality induced by variations in meteorology and/or emissions are simulated by the model. We applied the anomalies method where changes in observed and modeled 4th highest, 95th, 90th and 85th percentile of summertime (May–September) daily maximum 8-h (DM8HR) ozone concentrations are compared for all monitoring stations in the USA. We also applied spectral decomposition of ozone time-series using the KZ filter to assess variations in the strengths of synoptic (weather-induced variations) and baseline (long-term variation forcings), embedded in the simulated and observed concentrations. The results reveal that CMAQ captured the year-to-year variability (more so in the later years than the earlier years) and the synoptic forcing in accordance with what the observations are showing. We examine methods to identify the strengths of the model in representing the changes in simulated O3 air quality over this period that can guide the development of approaches for a more robust analysis of emission reduction scenarios.
