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EVALUATION OF AN ANNUAL SIMULATION OF OZONE AND FINE PARTICULATE MATTER OVER THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES - WHICH TEMPORAL FEATURES ARE CAPTURED?
Citation:
Hogrefe, C., J. M. Jones, A B. Gilliland, P. S. Porter, E. L. Gego, R Gilliam, J L. Swall, J. S. Irwin, AND S T. Rao. EVALUATION OF AN ANNUAL SIMULATION OF OZONE AND FINE PARTICULATE MATTER OVER THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES - WHICH TEMPORAL FEATURES ARE CAPTURED? Presented at 27th NATO/CCMS International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution and Its Application, Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 25-29, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
This task has the following objectives:
Improve modelers' ability to focus on scientific and policy issues in modeling studies by providing software that supports composing, applying, and evaluating complex systems of models.
Improve the understanding of the interaction of the atmosphere and the underlying surface, especially the flux of mass in both directions, and EPA's ability to simulate that interaction.
Contribute to multimedia studies and assessments by applying state-of-the-art atmospheric models, estimating atmospheric contributions to multimedia issues and the sources of those contributions, and evaluating the models' strengths and weaknesses.
Description:
Motivated by growing concerns about the detrimental effects of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on human health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently promulgated a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for PM2.5. The PM2.5 standard includes a 24-hour limit (65 ug/m3 for the 98th percentile) and annual (15 ug/m3) limit. Except for a few cases, the annual standard will be the primary concern for attainment issues. Over the next several years, grid-based photochemical models such as the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model (Byun and Ching, 1999) will be used by regulatory agencies to design emission control strategies aimed at meeting and maintaining the NAAQS for O3 and PM2.5. The evaluation of these models for a simulation of current conditions is a necessary prerequisite for using them to simulate future conditions. The evaluation presented in this study focuses on determining the temporal patterns in all components of the modeling system (meteorology, emissions and air quality) and comparing them against available observations. Furthermore, we briefly investigated the weekday/weekend differences in the observed and predicted pollutant concentrations and outlined steps for future research. Since anthropogenic emissions are known to have a distinct weekly cycle, such analyses would help us in evaluating the modeling system's ability to accurately reproduce the observed response to emission changes.
The research presented here was performed under the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and under agreement number DW13921548. This paper has been reviewed in accordance with the EPA's peer and administrative review policies and approved for presentation and publication.