13th Confernce on the Applications of Air Pollution Meteorolgy with the Air and Waste Management Assoc

1.4

An integrated meteo-diffusional modelling system to manage atmospheric pollution: an application of combined RAMS-CALMET-CALGRID models to evaluate ozone pollution in the Tuscany region

Giovanni Gualtieri, CNR-IBIMET, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy; and F. Calastrini

The Laboratory for Meteorological and Environmental Modelling (LaMMA) developed an integrated modelling system to manage mesoscale atmospheric pollution, which is based on the RAMS model meteorological forecasting. The system works like two model chains: the RAMS-CALMET-CALPUFF one and the RAMS-CALMET-CALGRID one. This work is the sequel of one previously carried out, dealing with the development of the RAMS-CALMET-CALPUFF model option. This time the implementation and application of the RAMS-CALMET-CALGRID model chain is pointed out, aimed at estimating ozone concentrations at a regional scale. A suitable interface directly connecting the RAMS meteo fields to the CALGRID model was developed, which is able to completely by-pass the CALMET meteo preprocessor. In the present study a preliminary application of RAMS-CALMET-CALGRID models over the whole of Tuscany region has been made. The study area is 180x220 Km2 wide, made of a 45x55x12 3-D computational grid, with a horizontal resolution of 4 Km2. A four-days case-study has been considered, July 12th to 15th, 1997, when a number of peak O3 concentration episodes occurred. The SAPRC-90 chemical mechanism developed by Carter (1988) has been used in order to setup all the inputs to describe the chemical processes leading to the O3 formation and removal in the atmosphere. Concerning emission data, all point and area sources covering the whole of region were considered. A simplified approach was used to define initial and boundary conditions of all modelled species. A number of runs was performed in order to make a sensitivity analysis of CALGRID with respect to different input scenarios. This definitely showed the boundary conditions as the most affecting input to CALGRID. Final results of such a preliminary test-case showed a fair accuracy with respect to measurements. However, the complexity of the studied problem requires future improvements to be done, particularly once more refined input data will be available.

Session 1, Air Quality Forecasting
Monday, 23 August 2004, 9:00 AM-10:00 AM

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