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Need, Potential Value and Feasibility of a Ground-based Continuous Aloft Air Pollution Monitoring Network: A Modeling Perspective
Citation:
Mathur, R., C. Hogrefe, A. Hakami, S. Zhao, J. Szykman, AND G. Hagler. Need, Potential Value and Feasibility of a Ground-based Continuous Aloft Air Pollution Monitoring Network: A Modeling Perspective. 2019 AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 09 - 13, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Changing amounts of non-local (or background) air pollution contributions is cited as a key challenge for many regions in demonstrating compliance with the air quality standards, but feasible strategies have been lacking to characterize the space and time variations in these non-local contributions. Using process insights from comprehensive air pollution modeling and analyses of widespread surface-measurements, this analysis demonstrates a feasible cost-effective measurement strategy to overcome this critical knowledge gap and improve air quality forecasting and management.
Description:
Changing amounts of non-local (or background) air pollution contributions is a key challenge for many regions in demonstrating compliance with the air quality standards, but feasible strategies to overcome associated knowledge gaps have been lacking. Applying our classical understanding of air pollution dynamics to widespread surface-level and aloft ozone measurements, in conjunction with process-based interpretation from Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system and detailed backward-sensitivity calculations that quantitatively link surface-level and aloft pollution, we show that quantitative characterization of the amount of ozone in the air entrained from aloft every morning as the atmospheric boundary layer grows in response to surface heating is a key component for characterizing background or the non-local contribution of ozone pollution at a location. We will discuss how continuous aloft air pollution measurements can cost-effectively be achieved through leveraging recent technological advances in sensor development and the proliferation of tall communications masts to potentially provide a first complete view of nocturnal aloft pollution. Analysis of detailed calculations with the CMAQ-Adjoint model will be presented which suggest that improvements in ozone distribution characterization at 400-500m altitude from such measurements would be 3-4 times more effective in characterizing the surface-level daily maximum 8-hour average ozone (DM8O3) than improvements from surface measurements, since they directly quantify the amount of pollution imported to a location, and furnish key-missing information on processes and sources regulating background ozone and its modulation of ground-level concentrations. Results from preliminary chemical data assimilation experiments will be presented to further demonstrate the potential utility of such aloft measurements in improving model-forecast air quality health advisories. Measurements between 200-2000m also capture >80% of the DM8O3 sensitivity to tropospheric O3.