Supporting Real-Time Air Quality Forecasting using the SMOKE modeling system

Emission inventories and associated data have been prepared for twice daily processing using the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) modeling system. The twice-daily emissions estimates from SMOKE were used in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) and Multiscale Air Quality Simulation Platform (MAQSIP) modeling systems to produce daily ozone and haze/visibility predictions for the continental United States. These forecasts have been generated for a national domain since the spring of 2005 and for both regional and urban scale modeling domains since the summer of 1998. This paper provides an overview of the emissions inventory data used, the issues encountered during preparation, the data flows to support the forecasting system, and the uses of the ozone and haze forecasts.

SMOKE is used to process area, non-road, on-road mobile, biogenic and point sources data to create three dimensional gridded, hourly emissions files for input into CMAQ and MAQSIP. Meteorological forecast data from the Penn State/National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Modeling System(MM5) are used as input for processing and allocating mobile, biogenic and point sources. This paper will discuss inventory improvements needed in the future, potential other uses for the forecasts, and future plans for forecasting air quality in 2006.