Application of Lidar Data to the Performance Evaluations of CMAQ Model

The US EPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model has been widely used for air quality management and for produceing daily U.S. forecasts for ozone air quality by the National Weather Service. It is also used by states to assess implementation actions needed to attain National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network (TOLNet), which makes available of the high-resolution spatio-temporal measurement of tropospheric (surface to tropopause) ozone and aerosol vertical profiles, provides an unique dataset to assess the vertical performance of air quality models. In this study, we will develop techniques to effectively apply the dataset to the model domain in time and space, and then to assess the model's performance over different horizontal resolutions.