Source-Apportioned Health Impacts of NOx Emissions in the New York City Metropolitan Region

Apportioning the New York City (NYC) metropolitan region’s air quality impacts remains challenging, given the large variety of emissions sources as well as land-sea interactions from the Long Island Sound and Atlantic Ocean. The region remains in non-attainment of the EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone (O₃), and there have been two air quality field campaigns – the 2018 Long Island Sound Tropospheric Ozone Study (LISTOS) and the 2023 Synergistic TEMPO Air Quality Science (STAQS) campaign – to further understand the region’s pollution. In this work, we use the Comprehensive Air Quality Model with Extensions (CAMx) with meteorological inputs from the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) to simulate air quality for a broader NYC metropolitan domain at 1.33 km spatial resolution for May-September 2018 during LISTOS. Modeled estimates of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) column concentrations are evaluated against observed NO₂ column concentrations from the Pandora surface network, from GEOstationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) Airborne Simulator (GCAS) observations, and from space-based observations from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), highlighting a potential positive bias in modeled late summer NO₂ in the region. Further, we evaluate CAMx surface concentrations of NO₂ and O₃ against observed surface concentrations from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sites throughout the region. Using the source apportionment feature of CAMx, we estimate sector-by-sector respiratory health impacts conferred by short-term NO₂ and O₃ exposure by tagging emissions from a variety of point and area emissions sources. Finally, we compare NO₂ observations from 2018 LISTOS to 2023 STAQS to provide a comparison of pre- and post-pandemic air quality for the NYC region.