A performance evaluation of the Eta -CMAQ air quality forecast model for the summer of 2005

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have been developing an Air Quality Forecasting Program that will eventually result in an operational Nationwide Air Quality Forecasting System. This program, which couples NOAA's Eta meteorological model with EPA's Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, will be providing O3 forecasts for the northeastern United States during the summer of 2005. A performance evaluation of the coupled modeling system will be performed (using O3 observations obtained from EPA's AIRNOW program) in which both discrete forecasts (observed versus modeled concentrations) for hourly, maximum 1-hr, and maximum 8-hr O3 concentrations and categorical forecasts (observed versus modeled exceedances / non-exceedances) for both the maximum 1-hr (125 ppb) and 8-hr (85 ppb) were evaluated.