Performance Evaluation of the Meteorology and Air Quality Conditions From Multiscale WRF‐CMAQ Simulations for the Long Island Sound Tropospheric Ozone Study (LISTOS)

Abstract

The Long Island Sound (LIS) Tropospheric Ozone Study was a multi‐agency collaborative field campaign conducted during the summer of 2018 to improve the understanding of ozone chemistry and transport from New York City to areas downstream, especially the LIS and adjacent Connecticut coastline. Measurements made during this campaign were leveraged to test and evaluate the coupled WRF‐CMAQ model at 12 km, 4 and 1.33 km horizontal grid spacing. Special attention was placed on the model's representation of sea breeze circulations, low level jets, and boundary layer evolution. The evaluation suggests using higher resolutions resulted in improved surface meteorology statistics throughout the whole summer, with temperature biases seeing the biggest statistical improvements when using 1.33‐km grid spacing, going from −0.12 to 0.08 K. Additionally, 4‐km grid spacing provided the biggest advantage when simulating ozone over the region of interest, with biases being reduced from 2.40 to 0.57 to 0.37 ppbV with increased resolution. Case studies of two high ozone concentration events (July 10 and August 6) revealed that sound breezes and low‐level jets had a critical role in transporting pollutant‐rich, shallow marine air masses from the LIS inland over the Connecticut coast. Modifications were made to the representation of sea surface temperatures, which subsequently improved the simulation of surface ozone predictions.

Simulation of Neighborhood‐Scale Air Quality With Two‐Way Coupled WRF‐CMAQ Over Southern Lake Michigan‐Chicago Region

“…Compared to NO 2 and O 3 , simulated PM 2.5 has a lower correlation with EPA AQS station observations, though our model performance is comparable to results reported by many previous studies (e.g., Torres‐Vazquez et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2021). Given that SO 2 contributes to secondary PM formation, the relatively poor performance of WRF‐CMAQ simulated SO 2 likely influences the PM 2.5 model‐observation agreement.…”

Unraveling the interaction of urban emission plumes and marine breezes involved in the formation of summertime coastal high ozone on Long Island

“…Generally similar to the previous studies about the inuence of sea breeze affecting the coastal urban regions, [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] the processes for producing these types of high O 3 events at the Long Island south shore include: (1) the transport of urban plumes over the ocean south of Long Island, (2) chemical reactions in these polluted plumes to form high ozone in the shallow marine boundary layer, (3) a late-aernoon marine ow carrying this high ozone plume to Long Island. However, the discrepancy comes from the marine ow being blocked by various meteorological conditions (i.e., New York Bight Jet, weak sea breeze front, synoptic stationary front, etc.)…”

“…), [12][13][14][15] summertime extreme meteorological conditions (i.e., heatwave days) 16,17 and especially the inuence of the sea breeze at coastal regions. [18][19][20][21][22][23] The mesoscale sea breeze, most frequently occurring during summertime, is triggered by the thermal contrast between the warmer air over land and the cooler air over water. [24][25][26] This circulation from the marine boundary layer onto the coastal land area can, at times, return aged polluted air onto the coastal area and degrade the air quality.…”

A New Aerosol Dry Deposition Model for Air Quality and Climate Modeling

“…Detailed description of the model configuration and evaluation are presented by Torres‐Vazquez et al. (2022). Model simulations using the new aerosol dry deposition model (NEW) were conducted for the 12 km CONUS domain for July 2018 and for the 1.33 km domain for July and August 2018.…”