Influence of Boundary Conditions on Simulated U.S. Air Quality

摘要

One of the key inputs to regional-scale photochemical models frequently used in air quality planning and forecasting applications are chemical boundary conditions representing background pollutant concentrations originating outside the regional modeling domain. A number of studies have investigated the effects of boundary conditions on the results of the regional-scale simulations. In this study, we build upon the existing body of work by analyzing two annual simulations for the year 2010 over the continental U.S. driven by boundary conditions derived from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) global IFS-MOZART system applied in two different configurations. Daily maximum 8-hr (DM8HR) ozone and 24-hr PM_(2.5) concentrations from these simulations are then compared to determine the magnitude of model-to-model differences and their impact on model performance.