Impact of an improved Cuban emissions inventory on air quality simulations
Abstract
The energy sector in the Central America and Caribbean regions is primarily fossil fuel based and one of the major sources of air pollution in the region. In Cuba, energy production is responsible for 99% of SO2 emissions, 98% of NOX and 94% of CO, with emissions in 2000 of 588.59 Gg, 149.57 Gg and 536.42 Gg, respectively, according to the Cuban National Inventory - CNI. Electric power generation plants, the most important sub-sector, are highlighted as point sources of high emissions, in particular, SO2. Global inventories are shown to be inaccurate for Cuba. RETRO has non-zero data for just one cell, over the city of Havana. EDGAR has deficiencies in its geographical distribution, with no emissions over the city of Havana, and the distribution of emissions by sectors is unrealistic according to the CNI: for instance, in the case of SO2, it distributes emissions nearly equally between electricity generation and the remaining sectors, which is inaccurate. More importantly, emissions are overestimated, with the notable exception of SO2 and NMVOC. The most important reasons are the particularities of Cuba, including the extensive employ of fossil fuels with little refining and high sulfur content in energy production and industrial processes such as asphalt production, and the use of low efficiency technologies. This work presents an improved emissions inventory with CNI data and detailed emissions for all major power generation plants. The impact of this improvement was assessed through numerical air quality simulations of the transport and transformation of these emissions from a regional perspective, conducted with the CCATT-BRAMS 3D atmospheric chemical transport model, developed and maintained by INPE, Brazil. Boundary conditions were supplied by global model MOCAGE with chemistry scheme RELACS. Simulations with the new inventory were conducted with CATT-BRAMS using chemical mechanism RELACS, incorporated as part of this work, for two months (January and August) of 2008, and the differences found for the observed patterns for the dispersion of pollutants at a regional scale are discussed. The behavior of the model was evaluated through sensitivity tests.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.A51D0165S
- Keywords:
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- 0345 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Pollution: urban and regional;
- 0365 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0368 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- 0399 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / General or miscellaneous