Simulating Regional-Scale Ozone Climatology over the Eastern United States: Model Evaluation Results

Item

Title
Simulating Regional-Scale Ozone Climatology over the Eastern United States: Model Evaluation Results
Description
To study the potential impacts of climate change on air quality and public health over the eastern United States, a coupled global/regional-scale modeling system consisting of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies Atmosphere–Ocean model, the MM5 mesoscale meteorological model and the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for air quality has been developed. Evaluation results of the modeling system used to simulate climate and ozone air quality over the eastern United States during the five summers of 1993–1997 are presented in this paper. The results indicate that MM5 and CMAQ capture interannual and synoptic-scale variability present in surface temperature and ozone observations in the current climate, while the magnitude of fluctuations on shorter time scales is underestimated. A comparison of observed and predicted spatial patterns of daily maximum ozone concentrations shows best performance in predicting patterns for average and above-average ozone concentrations. The frequency distributions of the duration of extreme heat and ozone events show similar features for both model predictions and observations. Finally, application of a synoptic map-typing procedure reveals that the MM5/CMAQ system succeeded in simulating the average ozone concentrations associated with several frequent pressure patterns, indicating that the effects of synoptic-scale meteorology on ozone concentrations are captured by the modeling system. It is concluded that the GCM/MM5/CMAQ system is a suitable tool for the simulation of summertime surface temperature and ozone air quality conditions over the eastern United States in the present climate.
Version of Record
Creator
Hogrefe, C.
Biswas, J.
Lynn, B.
Civerolo, K.
Ku, J.-Y.
Klein-Rosenthal, Joyce Ellen
Rosenzweig, C.
Goldberg, R.
Kinney, P.L.
Subject
Regional-scale air quality modeling
Model evaluation
Regional climate modeling
Interannual variability
Map-typing analysis
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Date
2015-07-17T13:59:14Z
2004
Type
Journal Article
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
Hogrefe, C., J. Biswas, B. Lynn, K. Civerolo, J.-Y. Ku, J. Rosenthal, C. Rosenzweig, R. Goldberg, and P.L. Kinney. 2004. Simulating Regional-Scale Ozone Climatology over the Eastern United States: Model Evaluation Results. Atmospheric Environment 38, no. 17: 2627–2638.
1352-2310
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17462969
10.1016/j.atmosenv.2004.02.033
Language
en_US
Relation
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2004.02.033
Atmospheric Environment