ozone air quality simulations with wrf-chem (v3.5.1) over europe: model evaluation and chemical mechanism comparison
Clicks: 115
ID: 234182
2016
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This
article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score —
reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
Reader Engagement
Steady Performance
30.0
/100
115 views
23 readers
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
SteadyRanked #77 of 133 articles by views in international journal of quantum chemistry
Most read
Least read
Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 133 in total.
Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet mintedCreate a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.
5
SUSD
one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
We present an evaluation of the online regional model WRF-Chem over Europe
with a focus on ground-level ozone (O3) and nitrogen oxides
(NOx). The model performance is evaluated for two chemical mechanisms, MOZART-4 and RADM2, for year-long simulations. Model-predicted surface meteorological variables (e.g., temperature, wind speed and direction)
compared well overall with surface-based observations, consistent with other
WRF studies. WRF-Chem simulations employing MOZART-4 as well as RADM2
chemistry were found to reproduce the observed spatial variability in surface
ozone over Europe. However, the absolute O3 concentrations predicted
by the two chemical mechanisms were found to be quite different, with
MOZART-4 predicting O3 concentrations up to 20 µg m−3
greater than RADM2 in summer. Compared to observations, MOZART-4 chemistry
overpredicted O3 concentrations for most of Europe in the summer and
fall, with a summertime domain-wide mean bias of +10 µg m−3
against observations from the AirBase network. In contrast, RADM2 chemistry
generally led to an underestimation of O3 over the European domain in
all seasons. We found that the use of the MOZART-4 mechanism, evaluated here
for the first time for a European domain, led to lower absolute biases than
RADM2 when compared to ground-based observations. The two mechanisms show
relatively similar behavior for NOx, with both MOZART-4 and RADM2 resulting in a slight underestimation of NOx compared to surface observations. Further investigation of the differences between the two mechanisms revealed that the net midday photochemical production rate of
O3 in summer is higher for MOZART-4 than for RADM2 for most of the
domain. The largest differences in O3 production can be seen over
Germany, where net O3 production in MOZART-4 is seen to be higher
than in RADM2 by 1.8 ppb h−1 (3.6 µg m−3 h−1)
or more. We also show that while the two mechanisms exhibit similar NOx
sensitivity, RADM2 is approximately twice as sensitive to increases in
anthropogenic VOC emissions as MOZART-4. Additionally, we found that
differences in reaction rate coefficients for inorganic gas-phase chemistry
in MOZART-4 vs. RADM2 accounted for a difference of 8 µg m−3,
or 40 % of the summertime difference in O3 predicted by the two
mechanisms. Differences in deposition and photolysis schemes explained
smaller differences in O3. Our results highlight the strong
dependence of modeled surface O3 over Europe on the choice of
gas-phase chemical mechanism, which we discuss in the context of overall
uncertainties in prediction of ground-level O3 and its associated
health impacts (via the health-related metrics MDA8 and SOMO35).
| Reference Key |
mar2016geoscientificozone
Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using
SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
|
|---|---|
| Authors | ;K. A. Mar;N. Ojha;A. Pozzer;T. M. Butler |
| Journal | international journal of quantum chemistry |
| Year | 2016 |
| DOI |
10.5194/gmd-9-3699-2016
|
| URL | |
| Keywords |
Citations
No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.