Emissions of CO and NOx at Two Near-Road Sites within the Baltimore-Washington Region: Influence of Meteorology
Abstract
Emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from mobile sources have steadily declined over the past few decades due to various regulations that limit the amount a vehicle may emit to the atmosphere. These gases are being regulated because CO negatively impacts human health by decreasing the amount of oxygen delivered in blood, and NO2 is considered a respiratory irritant. Both CO and NOx are involved with the formation of ground-level ozone, and NOx is a precursor of fine particles. Both of these gases are monitored and regulated by the EPA. Since emissions of CO and NOx are declining, emission inventories used for air quality modeling must be continually updated and evaluated by comparison to observations. Here we present analysis of measurements of CO and NOx taken at two near-road sites, where one station is adjacent to a road where large trucks are permitted while the other station is adjacent to a road where trucks are not permitted. We compare the observed relationship of temperature and humidity with ambient CO and NOx concentrations to that calculated using the U.S. EPA MOtor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES2014a) model. Emission rates calculated by the MOVES model are input into the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) model, which produces the hourly gridded input used by air quality models such as the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The evaluation of the MOVES emission rates with observations is critically important to ensure that regulatory air quality models properly represent actual atmospheric composition.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.A21C0047H
- Keywords:
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- 0312 Air/sea constituent fluxes;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES