Assessing the capability of TEMPO to retrieve pollution gradients in complex environments

NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) geostationary sensor is expected to greatly improve observations and our understanding of spatiotemporal pollution variability in North America and the processes driving them. In this study, high spatial resolution chemical transport (CTM) modeling during the Synergistic TEMPO Air Quality Science (STAQS) campaign in summer 2023 was performed to improve our understanding of regional air quality and examine pollutant transport in coastal regions and along the urban/rural interface. We perform Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model simulations at 1.33 km × 1.33 km resolutions using a 1-km anthropogenic emission dataset, Neighborhood Emission Mapping Operation (NEMO), and initial and lateral meteorological conditions from the 3-km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model, over the intensive airborne and ground-based measurement periods during the campaign. We assess model capability in reproducing observed spatiotemporal structure and variability of NO₂ and O₃ concentrations using ground-based airborne in situ and remote-sensing observations. NASA’s TEMPO mission provided novel continuous high temporal and spatial resolution NO₂ and O₃ measurements during the STAQS campaign. In this study, we evaluate TEMPO version 2 tropospheric NO₂ columns and vertical O₃ profile (if available by the time of the presentation) retrievals in conjunction with our high-resolution CTM simulations. This work combines ground-based and airborne in-situ and remote-sensing measurements, high spatial resolution CTM simulations, and TEMPO retrievals to gain a better understanding of processes driving large pollution gradients in coastal environments and along the urban/rural interface. This study aims to grasp how well TEMPO measured pollution quantities can be used synergistically to refine our understanding of O₃ formation and chemistry in complex coastal environments. A more in-depth analysis of the impact of land-water gradients and emissions transport in these complex environments, with a focus on tropospheric O₃ profile retrievals, will be investigated in future work.