scholarly journals Attribution of future US ozone pollution to regional emissions, climate change, long-range transport, and model deficiency

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 26231-26256 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. He ◽  
X.-Z. Liang ◽  
H. Lei ◽  
D. J. Wuebbles

Abstract. A regional chemical transport model (CTM) is used to quantify the relative contributions of future US ozone pollution from regional emissions, climate change, long-range transport (LRT) of pollutants, and model deficiency. After incorporating dynamic lateral boundary conditions (LBCs) from a global CTM, the representation of present-day US ozone pollution is notably improved. This nested system projects substantial surface ozone trends for 2050's: 6–10 ppbv decreases under the "clean" A1B scenario and ~15 ppbv increases under the "dirty" A1Fi scenario. Among the total trends, regional emissions changes dominate, contributing negative 20–50% in A1B and positive 20–40% in A1Fi, while LRT effects through chemical LBCs and climate changes account for respectively 15–50% and 10–30% in both scenarios. The projection uncertainty due to model biases is region dependent, ranging from −10 to 50%. It is shown that model biases of present-day simulations can propagate into future projections systematically but nonlinearly, and the accurate specification of LBCs is essential for US ozone projections.

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 3337-3367 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Hedegaard ◽  
J. Brandt ◽  
J. H. Christensen ◽  
L. M. Frohn ◽  
C. Geels ◽  
...  

Abstract. The response of a selected number of chemical species is inspected with respect to climate change. The coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model ECHAM4-OPYC3 is providing meteorological fields for the Chemical long-range Transport Model DEHM. Three selected decades (1990s, 2040s and 2090s) are inspected. The 1990s are used as a reference and validation period. In this decade an evaluation of the output from the DEHM model with ECHAM4-OPYC3 meteorology input data is carried out. The model results are tested against similar model simulations with MM5 meteorology and against observations from the EMEP monitoring sites in Europe. The test results from the validation period show that the overall statistics (e.g. mean values and standard deviations) are similar for the two simulations. However, as one would expect the model setup with climate input data fails to predict correctly the timing of the variability in the observations. The overall performance of the ECHAM4-OPYC3 setup as meteorological input to the DEHM model is shown to be acceptable according to the applied ranking method. It is concluded that running a chemical long-range transport model on data from a "free run" climate model is scientifically sound. From the model runs of the three decades, it is found that the overall trend detected in the evolution of the chemical species, is the same between the 1990 decade and the 2040 decade and between the 2040 decade and the 2090 decade, respectively. The dominating impacts from climate change on a large number of the chemical species are related to the predicted temperature increase. Throughout the 21th century the ECHAM4-OPYC3 projects a global mean temperature increase of 3 K with local maxima up to 11 K in the Arctic winter based on the IPCC A2 emission scenario. As a consequence of this temperature increase, the temperature dependent biogenic emission of isoprene is predicted to increase significantly over land by the DEHM model. This leads to an increase in the O3 production and together with an increase in water vapor to an increase in the number of free OH radicals. Furthermore this increase in the number of OH radicals contributes to a significant change in the typical life time of many species, since OH are participating in a large number of chemical reactions. It is e.g. found that more SO42− will be present in the future over the already polluted areas and this increase can be explained by an enhanced conversion of SO2 to SO42−.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
In-Bo Oh ◽  
Yoo-Keun Kim ◽  
Mi-Kyung Hwang ◽  
Cheol-Hee Kim ◽  
Soontae Kim ◽  
...  

Abstract Elevated layers of high ozone concentration were observed over the Seoul metropolitan region (SMR) in Korea by ozonesonde measurements during 6–9 June 2003. An analysis of the synoptic-scale meteorological features and backward trajectories revealed that the layers were associated with the long-range transport of ozone from eastern China. Further examination of the long-range transport process responsible for the development of these layers was performed using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. CMAQ demonstrated that the upward mixing of ozone by convective activity in eastern China and subsequent horizontal transport aloft in the periphery of a slow-moving high pressure system led to the development of thick ozone layers over the SMR. Through comparative simulation studies, it was found that the surface ozone levels in the SMR can be significantly enhanced by the vertical down-mixing of ozone from the layer aloft with the growing mixed layer. On average, about 25% of the surface peak concentration in a given area during a high-ozone episode was due to the influence of the ozone layer aloft developed by the long-range transport process.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 1549-1564 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Davoine ◽  
M. Bocquet

Abstract. The reconstruction of the Chernobyl accident source term has been previously carried out using core inventories, but also back and forth confrontations between model simulations and activity concentration or deposited activity measurements. The approach presented in this paper is based on inverse modelling techniques. It relies both on the activity concentration measurements and on the adjoint of a chemistry-transport model. The location of the release is assumed to be known, and one is looking for a source term available for long-range transport that depends both on time and altitude. The method relies on the maximum entropy on the mean principle and exploits source positivity. The inversion results are mainly sensitive to two tuning parameters, a mass scale and the scale of the prior errors in the inversion. To overcome this hardship, we resort to the statistical L-curve method to estimate balanced values for these two parameters. Once this is done, many of the retrieved features of the source are robust within a reasonable range of parameter values. Our results favour the acknowledged three-step scenario, with a strong initial release (26 to 27 April), followed by a weak emission period of four days (28 April–1 May) and again a release, longer but less intense than the initial one (2 May–6 May). The retrieved quantities of iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 that have been released are in good agreement with the latest reported estimations. Yet, a stronger apportionment of the total released activity is ascribed to the first period and less to the third one. Finer chronological details are obtained, such as a sequence of eruptive episodes in the first two days, likely related to the modulation of the boundary layer diurnal cycle. In addition, the first two-day release surges are found to have effectively reached an altitude up to the top of the domain (5000 m).


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 3013-3032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narendra Ojha ◽  
Andrea Pozzer ◽  
Armin Rauthe-Schöch ◽  
Angela K. Baker ◽  
Jongmin Yoon ◽  
...  

Abstract. We compare in situ measurements of ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO) profiles from the CARIBIC program with the results from the regional chemistry transport model (WRF-Chem) to investigate the role of local and regional emissions and long-range transport over southern India during the summer monsoon of 2008. WRF-Chem successfully reproduces the general features of O3 and CO distributions over the South Asian region. However, absolute CO concentrations in the lower troposphere are typically underestimated. Here we investigate the influence of local relative to remote emissions through sensitivity simulations. The influence of 50 % increased CO emissions over South Asia leads to a significant enhancement (upto 20 % in July) in upper tropospheric CO in the northern and central Indian regions. Over Chennai in southern India, this causes a 33 % increase in surface CO during June. However, the influence of enhanced local and regional emissions is found to be smaller (5 %) in the free troposphere over Chennai, except during September. Local to regional emissions are therefore suggested to play a minor role in the underestimation of CO by WRF-Chem during June–August. In the lower troposphere, a high pollution (O3: 146.4 ± 12.8, CO: 136.4 ± 12.2 nmol mol−1) event (15 July 2008), not reproduced by the model, is shown to be due to transport of photochemically processed air masses from the boundary layer in southern India. A sensitivity simulation combined with backward trajectories indicates that long-range transport of CO to southern India is significantly underestimated, particularly in air masses from the west, i.e., from Central Africa. This study highlights the need for more aircraft-based measurements over India and adjacent regions and the improvement of global emission inventories.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3511-3525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Wang ◽  
Y. Zhang ◽  
J. Hao ◽  
M. Luo

Abstract. Both observations and a 3-D chemical transport model suggest that surface ozone over populated eastern China features a summertime trough and that the month when surface ozone peaks differs by latitude and region. Source-receptor analysis is used to quantify the contributions of background ozone and Chinese anthropogenic emissions on this variability. Annual mean background ozone over China shows a spatial gradient from 55 ppbv in the northwest to 20 ppbv in the southeast, corresponding with changes in topography and ozone lifetime. Pollution background ozone (annual mean of 12.6 ppbv) shows a minimum in the summer and maximum in the spring. On the monthly-mean basis, Chinese pollution ozone (CPO) has a peak of 20–25 ppbv in June north of the Yangtze River and in October south of it, which explains the peaks of surface ozone in these months. The summertime trough in surface ozone over eastern China can be explained by the decrease of background ozone from spring to summer (by −15 ppbv regionally averaged over eastern China). Tagged simulations suggest that long-range transport of ozone from northern mid-latitude continents (including Europe and North America) reaches a minimum in the summer, whereas ozone from Southeast Asia exhibits a maximum in the summer over eastern China. This contrast in seasonality provides clear evidence that the seasonal switch in monsoonal wind patterns plays a significant role in determining the seasonality of background ozone over China.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 7367-7396 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Zien ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
A. Hilboll ◽  
A.-M. Blechschmidt ◽  
J. P. Burrows

Abstract. Intercontinental long-range transport (LRT) events of NO2 relocate the effects of air pollution from emission regions to remote, pristine regions. We detect transported plumes in tropospheric NO2 columns measured by the GOME-2/MetOp-A instrument with a specialized algorithm and trace the plumes to their sources using the HYSPLIT Lagrangian transport model. With this algorithm we find 3808 LRT events over the ocean for the period 2007 to 2011. LRT events occur frequently in the mid-latitudes, emerging usually from coastal high-emission regions. In the free troposphere, plumes of NO2 can travel for several days to the polar oceanic atmosphere or to other continents. They travel along characteristic routes and originate from both continuous anthropogenic emission and emission events such as bush fires. Most NO2 LRT events occur during autumn and winter months, when meteorological conditions and emissions are most favorable. The evaluation of meteorological data shows that the observed NO2 LRT is often linked to cyclones passing over an emission region.


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