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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH,
VOL. 112,
D10S18,
doi:10.1029/2006JD007515,
2007
Influence of lateral and top boundary conditions on regional air quality prediction: A multiscale study coupling regional
and global chemical transport models
Youhua Tang
Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Gregory R. Carmichael
Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Narisara Thongboonchoo
Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Tianfeng Chai
Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Larry W. Horowitz
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Robert B. Pierce
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA
Jassim A. Al-Saadi
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA
Gabriele Pfister
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Jeffrey M. Vukovich
Carolina Environmental Program, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Melody A. Avery
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA
Glen W. Sachse
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA
Thomas B. Ryerson
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA
John S. Holloway
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Elliot L. Atlas
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, USA
Frank M. Flocke
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Rodney J. Weber
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
L. Gregory Huey
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Jack E. Dibb
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA
David G. Streets
Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, USA
William H. Brune
Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
The sensitivity of regional air quality model to various lateral and top boundary conditions is studied at 2 scales: a 60
km domain covering the whole USA and a 12 km domain over northeastern USA. Three global models (MOZART-NCAR, MOZART-GFDL and
RAQMS) are used to drive the STEM-2K3 regional model with time-varied lateral and top boundary conditions (BCs). The regional
simulations with different global BCs are examined using ICARTT aircraft measurements performed in the summer of 2004, and
the simulations are shown to be sensitive to the boundary conditions from the global models, especially for relatively long-lived
species, like CO and O3. Differences in the mean CO concentrations from three different global-model boundary conditions are as large as 40 ppbv,
and the effects of the BCs on CO are shown to be important throughout the troposphere, even near surface. Top boundary conditions
show strong effect on O3 predictions above 4 km. Over certain model grids, the model's sensitivity to BCs is found to depend not only on the distance
from the domain's top and lateral boundaries, downwind/upwind situation, but also on regional emissions and species properties.
The near-surface prediction over polluted area is usually not as sensitive to the variation of BCs, but to the magnitude of
their background concentrations. We also test the sensitivity of model to temporal and spatial variations of the BCs by comparing
the simulations with time-varied BCs to the corresponding simulations with time-mean and profile BCs. Removing the time variation
of BCs leads to a significant bias on the variation prediction and sometime causes the bias in predicted mean values. The
effect of model resolution on the BC sensitivity is also studied.
Received 16
May
2006;
accepted 8
January
2007;
published 25
April
2007.
Keywords: chemical transport model;
lateral boundary condition;
ICARTT.
Index Terms: 0345 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Pollution: urban and regional (0305, 0478, 4251); 0368 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry; 3355 Atmospheric Processes: Regional modeling.
Read Full Article (file size: 4580702 bytes) Cited by
Citation: Tang, Y., et al.
(2007),
Influence of lateral and top boundary conditions on regional air quality prediction: A multiscale study coupling regional
and global chemical transport models,
J. Geophys. Res.,
112,
D10S18,
doi:10.1029/2006JD007515.
Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.
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