Impacts of Emission Variability on CTM Pollutant Representation

There are pronounced differences in the representation of key atmospheric pollutant gases, such as O₃, between the NASA Global Modeling Initiative chemistry transport model (GMI CTM) and observations inasmuch as the GMI CTM has difficulty reproducing observed pollutant variability, and, compared to observations, simulated pollutant fields show only weak correlation.

In this study, we assess two possible factors that could lead to the aforementioned model-observation differences: (1) emission inventories that vary only on monthly or annual bases and (2) model runs at differing resolutions (1˚x1.25˚and 2˚x2.5˚). In doing so we quantify the importance of a more realistic emission inventory and resolution on modeled pollutant responses.

We use in situ measurements of emissions from large industrial sources such as power plants and remotely sensed ozone- and particle-forming gases and create a time-varying emissions dataset and examine the differences between spatial fields of air pollutants generated using the time-invariant versus time-varying emission inventories to investigate (1). With respect to (2), we compare output from both CTM resolutions to observations and discuss the sensitivity of pollutant variability and trends in hindcast simulations to resolution.

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See more of: Joint Session with Committee on Atmospheric Chemistry. Part V: Air Quality Impacts on Society and the Environment Involving Ozone
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