Aerosol Transport and Photochemical Evolution over Baltimore–Washington Region Using Modeling and Observations

Aerosol particles play a key role in climate system acting on the global radiation budget, directly by scattering and absorbing the incoming solar radiation or indirectly by altering the cloud properties. Moreover, aerosols have major impacts on human health. Hence, in recent decades, aerosols have received much attention by the scientific community. Although significant improvements have been made, aerosol sources and evolution processes in the atmosphere are not completely understood. This study used the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) to understand aerosol transport and their photochemical evolution. The objective of this research is to examine naturally occurring aerosol transport and photochemical evolution over the Baltimore-Washington region from model simulations and compare it with observations. Observations used are from a network of collocated meteorological and air quality observational facilities at the Howard University Beltsville Research Campus in Beltsville, Maryland.