A123-08
Wildfire Impacts in Air Quality Prediction

Friday, 11 December 2020: 05:58
Virtual
Ivanka Stajner1, Jeffrey McQueen2, Jian-Ping Huang3,4, Cory Martin5, Rick D Saylor6, Daniel Tong7,8, Barry Baker9,10, Georg A Grell11, Raffaele Montuoro12, Hongli Wang13, Gregory J Frost14, Stuart A McKeen15, Rebecca Schwantes16, James M Wilczak17, Irina Djalalova18, Christoph Keller19, Brian Hughes3,4 and Shobha Kondragunta20, (1)NOAA/National Weather Service, NCEP/EMC, College Park, MD, United States, (2)National Centers For Environmental Prediction-Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, MD, United States, (3)IMSG, College Park, MD, United States, (4)NOAA/NWS/NCEP/EMC, College Park, MD, United States, (5)RedLine at NOAA NWS NCEP EMC, College Park, MD, United States, (6)NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States, (7)NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, College Park, MD, United States, (8)George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, United States, (9)NOAA ARL, College Park, United States, (10)University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States, (11)NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (12)NOAA, ESRL/GSL and CU Boulder/CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States, (13)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, United States, (14)Chemical Sciences Laboratory, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories, Boulder, CO, United States, (15)NOAA ESRL/CSL and CU Boulder/CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States, (16)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) University of Colorado and NOAA ESRL Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (17)NOAA/OAR/PSL, Boulder, CO, United States, (18)CIRES and NOAA/OAR/ESRL, Boulder, CO, United States, (19)Universities Space Research Association Columbia, Columbia, MD, United States, (20)NOAA NESDIS STAR, College Park, MD, United States
Recorded Presentation
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 NO2 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.
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