Wildfire Impacts in Air Quality Prediction
Abstract
Wildfires produce large amounts of pollutant emissions that impact air quality in communities close to the fire locations, but can also be carried far downwind. In order to improve predictions of wildfire impacts on air quality, NOAA is developing a limited-area, high-resolution online coupled numerical weather and atmospheric composition model. The meteorology will be represented by the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework. Full atmospheric chemistry will be represented by the EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system using Carbon Bond VI and AERO6 mechanisms. Wildfire emissions will be represented by the NESDIS Blended Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product (GBBEPx) and anthropogenic emissions inventories will be based on the National Emissions Inventory from EPA. This project has begun with the initial integration of the RRFS system with CMAQ column chemistry capability (RRFS-CMAQ). Simultaneously, an evaluation system based on FIREX-AQ data has been developed and current operational air quality predictions are being evaluated to establish a baseline against which the prototype RRFS-CMAQ system will be compared. Initial results from the new prototype RRFS-CMAQ system will be presented. Planned refinements of RRFS-CMAQ will focus on better representation of wildfire emissions, such as smoke plume rise and temporal distribution of smoke emissions according to the diurnal cycle. The spatial and temporal distributions of atmospheric pollutants will be additionally constrained using assimilation of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) retrievals from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and NO 2 retrievals from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). A machine learning emulator for CMAQ chemistry will be developed in order to allow more efficient computation of chemical transformations during the forecast period. Additionally, a bias correction post-processing algorithm will be applied to improve accuracy of predictions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMA123...08S
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 4341 Early warning systems;
- NATURAL HAZARDS