Air Quality Modeling and Forecasting over the United States Using WRF-Chem

WRF-Chem is the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with Chemistry. The model simulates the emission, transport, mixing, and chemical transformation of trace gases and aerosols simultaneously with the meteorology. The model is used for investigation of regional-scale air quality, field program analysis, and cloud-scale interactions between clouds and chemistry. The development of WRF-Chem is a collaborative effort among the community led by NOAA/ESRL scientists. The Official WRF-Chem web page is located at the NOAA web site. Our model development is closely linked with both NOAA/ESRL and DOE/PNNL efforts. Description of PNNL WRF-Chem model development is located at the PNNL web site as well as the PNNL Aerosol Modeling Testbed. High school and undergraduate students, representative of academic institutions throughout USA's Tri-State Area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut), set up WRF-Chem on CUNY CSI's High Performance Computing Center. Students learned the back-end coding that governs WRF-Chems structure and the front-end coding that displays visually specified weather simulations and forecasts. Students also investigated the impact, to select baseline simulations/forecasts, due to the reaction, NO2 + OH + M → HOONO + M (k = 9.2 × 10-12 cm3 molecule-1 s-1, Mollner et al. 2010). The reaction of OH and NO2 to form gaseous nitric acid (HONO2) is among the most influential and in atmospheric chemistry. Till a few years prior, its rate coefficient remained poorly determined under tropospheric conditions because of difficulties in making laboratory measurements at 760 torr. These activities fosters student coding competencies and deep insights into weather forecast and air quality.