You are here:
Evaluation of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3
Citation:
Appel, Keith, C. Hogrefe, K. Foley, B. Murphy, H. Pye, J. Bash, J. Pleim, G. Sarwar, Cheung Wong, D. Luecken, W. Hutzell, K. Fahey, S. Roselle, L. Ran, F. Sidi, D. Kang, R. Gilliam, AND R. Mathur. Evaluation of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3. 2019 Annual Community Modeling and Analysis System (CMAS) Conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, October 21 - 23, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This work presents an evaluation of the latest release of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The CMAQ model is a state-of-the-science air quality model used across the globe to perform air quality modeling for regulatory impact assessments, scientific studies and air quality forecasting. Every new release of the CMAQ model is thoroughly evaluated to provide the community with important information regarding model updates and significant changes in model performance that can be expected when using the new model. Presentations such as this provide an opportunity to share the evaluation results with the scientific community and stakeholders so they know how best to apply the new model.
Description:
More than a year ago, a beta version of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3 was released and evaluated. Since that time, additional development of CMAQv5.3 has taken place on the path to a final version of the model for release in the summer 2019. Updates to the model over the past year have addressed several model performance issues identified in the beta release evaluation, with these updates resulting in potentially significant changes in performance compared to the beta version of the model. In this study, we present an evaluation of the final release version of CMAQv5.3, comparing the model results to the previous version of the model (v5.2.1) and against an extensive array of observations. Simulations are performed for the contiguous United States using a regional configuration of the model and for the northern hemisphere using a version of the model configured for hemispheric simulations. The impact of the more extensive updates and/or new options in the modeling system (e.g. AERO7; STAGE) will be examined exclusively from the other model updates to provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact these larger updates have on model performance. Evaluation of gas, particle and wet deposited species using routine observations from U.S. networks (e.g. AQS, IMPROVE, NADP), European networks (e.g. EMEP), campaign measurement data (e.g. DISCOVERAQ), and, where applicable, global and satellite data will be presented. The presentation will also highlight some of the new analysis features available in the latest version of the Atmospheric Model Evaluation Tool (AMETv1.4), also scheduled for release in summer 2019.