AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Impacts of Household Sources on Air Pollution at Village and Regional Scales in India
BRIGITTE ROONEY, Ran Zhao, Yuan Wang, Kelvin Bates, Ajay Pillarisetti, Sumit Sharma, Seema Kundu, Tami Bond, Nicholas Lam, Bora Ozaltun, Li Xu, Varun Goel, Lauren Fleming, Robert Weltman, Simone Meinardi, Donald Blake, Sergey Nizkorodov, Rufus Edwards, Ankit Yadav, Narendra Arora, Kirk Smith, John Seinfeld, California Institute of Technology
Abstract Number: 382 Working Group: Source Apportionment
Abstract Approximately 3 billion people worldwide cook with solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, and agricultural residues. These fuels are often combusted in inefficient devices, producing carbonaceous emissions. More than 2.6 million premature deaths occur as a result of exposure to fine particulate matter from the resulting household air pollution. Household air pollution also contributes to ambient air pollution; however, the magnitude of this contribution is uncertain. We simulate the distribution of a major health-damaging outdoor air pollutant, PM2.5, using state-of-the-science emissions databases and atmospheric chemical transport models to estimate the impact of household combustion on ambient air quality in northern India. We employ an emissions inventory prepared based on a national inventory in India, an updated residential sector inventory, updated cookstove gas emissions factors from field studies, and PM2.5 speciation from cooking fire experiments. We simulate regional air quality using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system (CMAQ), in conjunction with the Weather Research and Forecasting modeling system (WRF) to simulate meteorological inputs for CMAQ and the global chemical transport model GEOS-Chem to generate boundary conditions of the computational domain. Comparisons between observed and simulated PM2.5 levels during September 2015, December 2015, and September 2016 at urban and rural sites in northern India are carried out to assess overall airborne levels and to estimate the contribution of household cooking emissions. Residential emissions are predicted to account for about 10% and 27% of anthropogenic PM2.5 in New Delhi and at rural sites, respectively. Of PM2.5 produced by household combustion, up to 80% is predicted to be secondary organic matter (SOA) during September months. Predicted levels of total SOA averaged about 30 µg m-3, representing approximately 30% and 20% of total PM2.5 levels in rural and urban areas, respectively.