AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
The Impact of Future Meteorology on Air Quality in the Eastern United States
MELISSA DAY, Benjamin Murphy, Spyros Pandis, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Patras
Abstract Number: 654 Working Group: Aerosols, Clouds, and Climate
Abstract Future changes in climate will affect regional air quality, but the behavior of some species is uncertain. To examine the effect of climate change on ozone and fine (under 2.5 micrometers) particulate matter (PM), we use the Global-REgional Climate-Air Pollution modeling System (GRE-CAPS). GRE-CAPS couples the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) II prime general circulation / chemical transport model (GCM/CTM), the MM5 regional meteorological model, and PMCAMx-2008, a regional chemical transport model. The Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN, v2.04) was added to provide meteorology-dependent biogenic emissions. Meteorology from ten representative years in the 1990s (present-day) and ten from the 2050s (future) is used. Future meteorology is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 scenario, detailing a heterogeneous world without a focus on sustainability. The future model predictions of ozone levels and fine PM constituents for the Eastern US are compared to present-day distributions, averages and extremes. Previous work by Dawson et al. (2009) covered similar ground, but lacked dynamic biogenic emissions, treated the primary organic aerosol as non-volatile and non-reactive, and simulated only the first generation of secondary organic aerosol production. In PMCAMx-2008, organic aerosol (OA) is simulated using the volatility basis set approach, in which primary emissions are semi-volatile and gas phase organic compounds are oxidized and result in products with lower volatility. For this reason, special focus is given to OA changes, particularly because there is less certainty about the OA response to climate than that of other fine PM components.
References
Dawson J.P., Racherla P.N., Lynn B. H., Adams P.J., Pandis S.N., 2009. Impacts of climate change on regional and urban air quality in the eastern United States: Role of meteorology. Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D05308, doi:10.1029/2008JD009849.