Correction to “Variability in surface ozone background over the United States: Implications for air quality policy”

2004 ◽  
Vol 109 (D4) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Fiore ◽  
D. J. Jacob ◽  
H. Liu ◽  
R. M. Yantosca ◽  
T. D. Fairlie ◽  
...  
2003 ◽  
Vol 108 (D24) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Fiore ◽  
D. J. Jacob ◽  
H. Liu ◽  
R. M. Yantosca ◽  
T. D. Fairlie ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (17) ◽  
pp. 9280-9288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tong ◽  
Li Pan ◽  
Weiwei Chen ◽  
Lok Lamsal ◽  
Pius Lee ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 3191-3208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao He ◽  
Xin-Zhong Liang ◽  
Chao Sun ◽  
Zhining Tao ◽  
Daniel Q. Tong

Abstract. We investigated the ozone pollution trend and its sensitivity to key precursors from 1990 to 2015 in the United States using long-term EPA Air Quality System (AQS) observations and mesoscale simulations. The modeling system, a coupled regional climate–air quality model (CWRF-CMAQ; Climate-Weather Research Forecast and the Community Multiscale Air Quality), captured well the summer surface ozone pollution during the past decades, having a mean slope of linear regression with AQS observations of ∼0.75. While the AQS network has limited spatial coverage and measures only a few key chemical species, CWRF-CMAQ provides comprehensive simulations to enable a more rigorous study of the change in ozone pollution and chemical sensitivity. Analysis of seasonal variations and diurnal cycle of ozone observations showed that peak ozone concentrations in the summer afternoon decreased ubiquitously across the United States, up to 0.5 ppbv yr−1 in major non-attainment areas such as Los Angeles, while concentrations at certain hours such as the early morning and late afternoon increased slightly. Consistent with the AQS observations, CMAQ simulated a similar decreasing trend of peak ozone concentrations in the afternoon, up to 0.4 ppbv yr−1, and increasing ozone trends in the early morning and late afternoon. A monotonically decreasing trend (up to 0.5 ppbv yr−1) in the odd oxygen (Ox=O3+NO2) concentrations are simulated by CMAQ at all daytime hours. This result suggests that the increased ozone in the early morning and late afternoon was likely caused by reduced NO–O3 titration, driven by continuous anthropogenic NOx emission reductions in the past decades. Furthermore, the CMAQ simulations revealed a shift in chemical regimes of ozone photochemical production. From 1990 to 2015, surface ozone production in some metropolitan areas, such as Baltimore, has transited from a VOC-sensitive environment (>50 % probability) to a NOx-sensitive regime. Our results demonstrated that the long-term CWRF-CMAQ simulations can provide detailed information of the ozone chemistry evolution under a changing climate and may partially explain the US ozone pollution responses to regional and national regulations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1737-1758 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Allen ◽  
K. E. Pickering ◽  
R. W. Pinder ◽  
B. H. Henderson ◽  
K. W. Appel ◽  
...  

Abstract. A lightning-nitrogen oxide (NO) algorithm is implemented in the Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) and used to evaluate the impact of lightning-NO emissions (LNOx) on tropospheric photochemistry over the United States during the summer of 2006. For a 500 mole per flash lightning-NO source, the mean summertime tropospheric NO2 column agrees with satellite-retrieved columns to within −5 to +13%. Temporal fluctuations in the column are moderately well simulated; however, the addition of LNOx does not lead to a better simulation of day-to-day variability. The contribution of lightning-NO to the model column ranges from ∼10% in the northern US to >45% in the south-central and southeastern US. Lightning-NO adds up to 20 ppbv to upper tropospheric model ozone and 1.5–4.5 ppbv to 8-h maximum surface layer ozone, although, on average, the contribution of LNOx to model surface ozone is 1–2 ppbv less on poor air quality days. LNOx increases wet deposition of oxidized nitrogen by 43% and total deposition of nitrogen by 10%. This additional deposition reduces the mean magnitude of the CMAQ low-bias in nitrate wet deposition with respect to National Atmospheric Deposition monitors to near zero. Differences in urban/rural biases between model and satellite-retrieved NO2 columns were examined to identify possible problems in model chemistry and/or transport. CMAQ columns were too large over urban areas. Biases at other locations were minor after accounting for the impacts of lightning-NO emissions and the averaging kernel on model columns. In order to obtain an upper bound on the contribution of uncertainties in NOy chemistry to upper tropospheric NOx low biases, sensitivity calculations with updated chemistry were run for the time period of the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment (INTEX-A) field campaign (summer 2004). After adjusting for possible interferences in NO2 measurements and averaging over the entire campaign, these updates reduced 7–9 km biases from 32 to 17% and 9–12 km biases from 57 to 46%. While these changes lead to better agreement, a considerable unexplained NO2 low-bias remains in the uppermost troposphere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 2145-2162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Delle Monache ◽  
Stefano Alessandrini ◽  
Irina Djalalova ◽  
James Wilczak ◽  
Jason C. Knievel ◽  
...  

AbstractAir quality forecasts produced by the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) help air quality forecasters across the United States in making informed decisions to protect public health from acute air pollution episodes. However, errors in air quality forecasts limit their value in the decision-making process. This study aims to enhance the accuracy of NAQFC air quality forecasts and reliably quantify their uncertainties using a statistical–dynamical method called the analog ensemble (AnEn), which has previously been found to efficiently generate probabilistic forecasts for other applications. AnEn estimates of the probability of the true state of a predictand are based on a current deterministic numerical prediction and an archive of prior analogous predictions paired with prior observations. The method avoids the complexity and real-time computational expense of model-based ensembles and is proposed here for the first time for air quality forecasting. AnEn is applied with forecasts from the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. Relative to CMAQ raw forecasts, deterministic forecasts of surface ozone (O3) and particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) based on AnEn’s mean have lower systemic and random errors and are overall better correlated with observations; for example, when computed across all sites and lead times, AnEn’s root-mean-square error is lower than CMAQ’s by roughly 35% and 30% for O3 and PM2.5, respectively, and AnEn improves the correlation by 50% for O3 and PM2.5. Probabilistic forecasts from AnEn are statistically consistent, reliable, and sharp, and they quantify the uncertainty of the underlying prediction.


2015 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 168-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua McCarty ◽  
Nikhil Kaza

2018 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumil K. Thakrar ◽  
Andrew L. Goodkind ◽  
Christopher W. Tessum ◽  
Julian D. Marshall ◽  
Jason D. Hill

Author(s):  
Gregor Singer ◽  
Joshua Graff Zivin ◽  
Matthew Neidell ◽  
Nicholas Sanders

AbstractSeasonal influenza is a recurring health burden shared widely across the globe. We study whether air quality affects the occurrence of severe influenza cases that require inpatient hospitalization. Using longitudinal information on local air quality and hospital admissions across the United States, we find that poor air quality increases the incidence of significant influenza hospital admissions. Effects diminish in years with greater influenza vaccine effectiveness. Apart from increasing vaccination rates, improving air quality may help reduce the spread and severity of influenza.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 9849-9893 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Lei ◽  
X.-Z. Liang ◽  
D. J. Wuebbles ◽  
Z. Tao

Abstract. Atmospheric mercury is a toxic air and water pollutant that is of significant concern because of its effects on human health and ecosystems. A mechanistic representation of the atmospheric mercury cycle is developed for the state-of-the-art global climate-chemistry model, CAM-Chem (Community Atmospheric Model with Chemistry). The model simulates the emission, transport, transformation and deposition of atmospheric mercury (Hg) in three forms: elemental mercury (Hg(0)), reactive mercury (Hg(II)), and particulate mercury (PHg). Emissions of mercury include those from human, land, ocean, biomass burning and volcano related sources. Land emissions are calculated based on surface solar radiation flux and skin temperature. A simplified air–sea mercury exchange scheme is used to calculate emissions from the oceans. The chemistry mechanism includes the oxidation of Hg(0) in gaseous phase by ozone with temperature dependence, OH, H2O2 and chlorine. Aqueous chemistry includes both oxidation and reduction of Hg(0). Transport and deposition of mercury species are calculated through adapting the original formulations in CAM-Chem. The CAM-Chem model with mercury is driven by present meteorology to simulate the present mercury air quality during the 1999–2001 periods. The resulting surface concentrations of total gaseous mercury (TGM) are then compared with the observations from worldwide sites. Simulated wet depositions of mercury over the continental United States are compared to the observations from 26 Mercury Deposition Network stations to test the wet deposition simulations. The evaluations of gaseous concentrations and wet deposition confirm a strong capability for the CAM-Chem mercury mechanism to simulate the atmospheric mercury cycle. The results also indicate that mercury pollution in East Asia and Southern Africa is very significant with TGM concentrations above 3.0 ng m−3. The comparison to wet deposition indicates that wet deposition patterns of mercury are more affected by the spatial variability of precipitation. The sensitivity experiments show that 22% of total mercury deposition and 25% of TGM concentrations in the United States are resulted from domestic anthropogenic sources, but only 9% of total mercury deposition and 7% of TGM concentrations are contributed by transpacific transport. However, the contributions of domestic and transpacific sources on the western United States levels of mercury are of comparable magnitude.


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