Brazilian Atmospheric Inventories – BRAIN: A comprehensive database of air quality in Brazil

Abstract

Abstract. Developing air quality management systems to control the impacts of air pollution requires reliable data. However, current initiatives do not provide datasets with large spatial and temporal resolutions for developing air pollution policies in Brazil. Here, we introduce the Brazilian Atmospheric Inventories – BRAIN, the first comprehensive database of air quality and its drivers in Brazil. BRAIN encompasses hourly datasets of meteorology, emissions, and air quality. We provide gridded data in two domains, covering the Brazilian territory with 20x20 km of spatial resolution and another covering Southern Brazil with 4x4 km. The emissions dataset includes vehicular emissions derived from the Brazilian Vehicular Emissions Inventory Software (BRAVES), industrial emissions produced with local data from the Brazilian environmental agencies, biomass burning emissions from FINN – Fire Inventory from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and biogenic emissions from the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN). The meteorology dataset has been derived from Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The air quality dataset contains the surface concentration of 216 air pollutants produced from coupling meteorological and emissions datasets with the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System (CMAQ). This paper describes how the datasets were produced, their limitations, and their spatiotemporal features. To evaluate the quality of the database, we compare the air quality dataset with 244 air quality monitoring stations, providing the model’s performance for each measured pollutant by the monitoring stations. We present a sample of the spatial variability of emissions, meteorology, and air quality in Brazil from 2019, revealing the hotspots of emissions and air pollution issues. By making BRAIN publicly available, we aim to provide the required data for developing air quality policies on municipality and state scales, especially for not developed and data-scarce municipalities. We also envision that BRAIN has the potential to create new insights and opportunities for air pollution research in Brazil.

Brazilian Atmospheric Inventories – BRAIN: a comprehensive database of air quality in Brazil

“…org/10.57760/sciencedb.09857 , and https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09859 . The BRAIN datasets in d02 are available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09886 , https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09885 (Hoinaski and Will, 2023c), and https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb. 09884 (Hoinaski and Will, 2023d).…”

“…data are available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09858 and https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09886 . Meteorology data are available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09857 and https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09885 (Hoinaski and Will, 2023c). Air quality data are available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09859 and https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09884 (Hoinaski and Will, 2023d).…”