Decadal Application of WRF/Chem under Future Climate and Emission Scenarios: Impacts of Technology-Driven Climate and Emission Changes on Regional Meteorology and Air Quality

Details

• Journal Title:
  Atmosphere
• Personal Author:
  Jena, C. ; Zhang, Y. ; Wang, K. ; Campbell, P.C.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service) ; EMC (Environmental Modelling Center) ; OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; ARL (Air Resources Laboratory) ; CISESS (Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies)
• Description:
  This work presents new climate and emissions scenarios to investigate changes on future meteorology and air quality in the U.S. Here, we employ a dynamically downscaled Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF/Chem) simulations that use two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios (i.e., A1B and B2) integrated with explicitly projected emissions from a novel Technology Driver Model (TDM). The projected 2046–2055 emissions show widespread reductions in most gas and aerosol species under both TDM/A1B and TDM/B2 scenarios over the U.S. The WRF/Chem simulations show that under the combined effects of the TDM/A1B climate and emission changes, the maximum daily average 8-h ozone (MDA8 h O3) increases by ~3 ppb across the U.S. mainly due to widespread increases in near-surface temperature and background methane concentrations, with some contributions from localized TDM emission changes near urban centers. For the TDM/B2 climate and emission changes, however, the MDA8 h O3 is widely decreased, except near urban centers where the relative TDM emission changes and O3 formation regimes leads to increased O3. The number of O3 exceedance days (i.e., MDA8 h O3 > 70 ppb) for the entire domain is significantly reduced by a grid cell maximum of up to 43 days (domain average ~0.5 days) and 62 days (domain average ~2 days) for the TDM/A1B and TDM/B2 scenarios, respectively, while in the western U.S., larger O3 increases lead to increases in nonattainment areas, especially for the TDM/A1B scenario. The combined effects of climate and emissions (for both A1B and B2 scenarios) will lead to widespread decreases in the daily 24-h average (DA24 h) PM2.5 concentrations, especially in the eastern U.S. (max decrease up to 93 µg m−3). The PM2.5 changes are dominated by decreases in anthropogenic emissions for both the TDM/A1B and TDM/B2 scenarios, with secondary effects on decreasing PM2.5 from climate change. The number of PM2.5 exceedance days (i.e., DA24 h PM2.5 > 35 µg m−3) is significantly reduced over the eastern U.S. under both TDM/A1B and B2 scenarios, which suggests that both climate and emission changes may synergistically lead to decreases in PM2.5 nonattainment areas in the future.
• Keywords:
  Air Quality Climatic Changes Air Quality Climatic Changes Climate Changes Downscaling Emissions Changes Modeling
• Source:
  Atmosphere 2023, 14(2), 225
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14020225
• Format:
  PDF
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:1f149a2002cce594b0e558c0ba85e70a01632c7fc84b0c87d28562f97ad22270
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/48607/noaa_48607_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 5.80 MB ]