Evaluations of Model Simulated Ozone and its Precursors in MUSICA-V0 Against In-situ and Airborne Measurements over the Continental US

Many parts of the United States exceed ozone air quality limits. Elevated ozone levels are associated with a variety of negative impacts on human health, agroecosystems, and the natural environment, which, for instance, include premature deaths attributable to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, impacts to crop yields resulting from reduced photosynthesis, and reduced visibility due to photochemical smog. High-resolution atmospheric chemistry models are needed to better understand the causes of ozone production in the affected regions and their impact on ambient air quality. In this study, we will focus on ozone formation in Colorado and Michigan using MUSICA-V0 (Multi-Scale Infrastructure for Chemistry and Aerosols, Version 0) model simulations. The simulations of ozone and its precursors (e.g., reactive nitrogen, nonmethane volatile organic compounds) will be evaluated with aircraft observations from the Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Experiment (FRAPPE) and NASAs DISCOVER-AQ Colorado (Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality in Colorado) conducted in the summer of 2014 over Colorado. MUSICA-V0, a configuration of CAM6-Chem (the Community Atmosphere Model, Version 6 with Chemistry), will be run with a horizontal resolution of approximately 14 km over the conterminous U.S., with the rest of the globe at the horizontal resolution of approximately 100 km. We will run MUSICA-V0 from May to August of 2014, with model-simulated ozone and ozone precursors sampled along the flight tracks of FRAPPE and DISCOVER-AQ Colorado. In addition, we will leverage to evaluate MUSICA-V0 model simulations with both ground-based in-situ and airborne remote sensing measurements of ozone and ozone precursors over metropolitan Detroit during recent MOOSE (Michigan-Ontario Ozone Source Experiment) field campaign in the summer of 2021. We will refine a domain over Michigan with a horizontal resolution of approximately 7 km in MUSICA-V0, aiming to investigate the sensitivity of model horizontal grid resolutions to atmospheric composition and chemistry.