92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 3:30 PM
The SHARP Campaign: Why It Matters
Room 342 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Eduardo P. Olaguer Jr., Houston Advanced Research Center, Woodlands, TX

The Study of Houston Atmospheric Radical Precursors (SHARP) was convened by the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) in response to questions concerning the ability of air quality models to properly account for the observed rate of ozone production in the Houston region. Among other things, it was suspected that the radical precursors, formaldehyde and nitrous acid, had undercounted primary sources or unaccounted for secondary formation pathways. The suspicion was vindicated by the results of the SHARP campaign. This presentation will: 1) review the scientific and regulatory drivers that motivated SHARP; 2) discuss modeling and observational studies conducted in the aftermath of SHARP that further reinforce the importance of the campaign's discoveries; and 3) reveal findings from a new neighborhood scale chemical transport model developed at HARC. The neighborhood scale model results demonstrate how primary formaldehyde associated with large flare emission events can promote extremely rapid ozone formation only a few kilometers downwind of the source. This type of event cannot be simulated at model spatial and temporal resolutions typically used in ozone attainment demonstrations.

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