Sensitivity Modeling Update University of North Carolina (UNC-IE) ENVIRON International Corporation (ENVIRON) April 29, 2015 Western States Air Quality Study Intermountain West Data Warehouse

2 Summary Winter O 3 Modeling Boundary Conditions Study MOVES2014 Sensitivity

3 Winter O 3 Modeling Objectives – To develop and test an operational WRF-SMOKE-CAMx winter O 3 model – Produce a winter O3 modeling configuration to use in simulation Base11b and 2014 modeling Design – WRF and CAMx configuration; no emissions adjustments – WRF configuration with SNODAS snow fields and landcover albedo adjustments – CAMx prototype that adjusts albedo based on snow cover and snow age – January – March 2011 simulation

4 Winter O 3 Modeling UGWOS Hourly O3 February Results – Winter configuration leads to systematically lower O3 – WRF and CAMx configuration alone doesn’t reproduce winter O 3 peaks – Performance actually declines for winter O 3 in UGWOS

5 Winter O 3 Modeling AQS Hourly O3 February Results – Myton, UT corroborates the WY O&G basin results – Welby, CO is a non O&G site; shows that the winter configuration helps some of the over prediction biases

6 Winter O 3 Modeling Preliminary Results – Meteorology and CAMx configurations alone won’t reproduce the winter O3 peaks – Need to explore the incremental addition of emissions changes; TOG increases and NOx decreases

Boundary Condition Sensitivity Tests Objectives – Investigate regional model performance issues related to boundary conditions (BCs) downscaled from global chemistry models (GCMs) – Identify systematic problems in the available GCM BCs – Produce recommendations for how to use GCM BCs for regional modeling in the West – Find a best-performing BC dataset for simulation 2011b Design – Downscale MOZART, GEOS-Chem, and AM3 to CONUS36-km BCs with CB6r2 chemistry – Winter/summer simulations with CAMx to evaluate the influence of the different BCs on model performance

Initial BC Sensitivity Tests CAMx V6.1 – /12/4 km two-way grid nesting – GCM to define lateral BCs around 36 km CONUS domain 2011a MOZART BCs (MZBC) 2011b GEOS-Chem BCs (GCBC) Dust performance issues, especially for MZBC, documented in wiki: wiki/wiki/1043/bc-sensitivity- modeling-results wiki/wiki/1043/bc-sensitivity- modeling-results PM 2.5 Monthly Bias (%) MPE

9 Additional BC Sensitivity Tests CAMx V6.2 (can use TOPCON BC) – Initial BC Sens runs use zero-gradient TOPCON BC as used in CAMx V6.1 and CMAQ – Jan/Jul /12 km initial BC tests MOZART BCs (MZBC) – Fine crustal (FCRS) greatly overestimated in Jul GEOS-Chem BCs (GCBC) – Some periods with very high FCRS and CCRS in Jul AM3 BCs (AMBC) – Some high CCRS in Jul

Jan Jul

11 Additional BC Sensitivity Tests Still setting up AMET for 2011 will use to evaluate MZBC, GCBC and AMBC – Need AMBC MPE results for next steps; select best performing BCs for additional analysis May need to cap BC dust concentrations at 10 µg/m 3 (FCRS and CCRS) – Perform Jan/Jul /12 km BC sensitivity tests If MPE seems reasonable, run with TOPCON for Jan/Jul /12 km Perform annual /12 km BC sensitivity test – Annual MPE to make sure no new issues related to BC – Adopt BCs for 2011b platform by end of May/early Jun

12 MOVES2014 Sensitivity Objective – Quantify the emissions and simulated air quality changes resulting from estimating on-road mobile emissions with MOVES2014 (relative to MOVES2010b) – Perform due diligence on a significant update to the model of a major source of emissions Design – MOVES2014 Sensitivity off of CAMx Base11a (MZ BCs) – Use EPA NEI2011v2 modeling platform MOVES2014 CB6 emission rate look up tables and inputs – Prepare these data for 15-day spin-up+January/July 2011 – CAMx MPE for January July CAMx simulations will finish in early May, results available mid-May

13 MOVES2014 Sensitivity Sensitivity Wiki NOx Emissions Results – Slightly higher NOx in the summer than winter months – Utah county total MOVES NOx emissions

14 MOVES2014 Sensitivity NOx Emissions Results – Monthly total NOx emissions differences (MOVES2014- MOVES2010b) – NOx emissions ratios (MOVES2014/MOVES2010b) – General decrease in onroad NOx in MOVES2014 relative MOVES2010b – Differences also reflect change in spatial surrogates (extended idle and starts/stops)

15 MOVES2014 Sensitivity TOG Emissions Results – >25% higher TOG in the summer than winter months – Wyoming county total TOG emissions

16 MOVES2014 Sensitivity TOG Emissions Results – Monthly total TOG emissions differences (MOVES2014- MOVES2010b) – TOG emissions ratios (MOVES2014/MOVES201 0b) – Increases in onroad TOG in MOVES2014 relative MOVES2010b