Abstract View
Aerosol Concentration in Northern South America: Attribution to Economic Sectors Using Chemical Transport Modeling
SEBASTIAN ESPITIA, Alejandra Montejo-Barato, Ricardo Morales Betancourt, Jorge A. Bonilla, Claudia Aravena, Universidad de los Andes
Abstract Number: 599
Working Group: Source Apportionment
Abstract
Air quality modeling is a widely used tool to represent the complex meteorological and chemical processes that take place in the atmosphere and ultimately determine air quality at a given location. These tools, however, have not been thoroughly utilized in Colombia to inform the design of environmental public policy. In this work, we use the chemical transport model WRF-Chem version 3.9.1 to evaluate the impact of different economic sectors on aerosol particles and gas-phase pollutants in Colombia and its capital, Bogotá. Three nested domains located in northern South America were used with resolutions of 27 km, 9 km, and 3 km, with 120x120, 126x126 and 132x132 grid-cells in each domain, respectively. All domains had 41 vertical sigma-pressure levels. Anthropogenic emissions from the global emissions inventory EDGARv4.3.1 were merged with a local emissions inventory for the city of Bogota. Biogenic emissions are also included using MEGAN. Aerosols are described with the two-moment, modal aerosol scheme MADE-VBS. A base case simulation was generated for the three domains. To evaluate the regional contribution five scenarios were defined disaggregating anthropogenic emissions into Agricultural, Electric Power Generation, Industrial, Mobile, Commercial, and other´s sectors. At the national scale, our results show that the sectors with the greatest contribution to PM2.5 concentrations are Mobile and Industrial, contributing 2.8 and 2.3 μg m-3 respectively, to the monthly-mean surface concentration. To establish contributions at the city level, only the sectors relevant for urban areas were evaluated (Industrial, Mobile and Resuspended Particulate Matter). For the city of Bogota, it was found that the paving of unpaved roads, the heavy-duty vehicles renewal and technology change in the industry can generate a maximum reduction of 8.0, 2.0 and 1.6 μg m-3 respectively, benefiting low and middle income areas of the city.