Modeling Ozone Concentrations: Urban- and Regional-Scale Models are Needed to Develop Emission Control Policies That Reduce Ozone Levels

摘要

Regional scale air quality models are needed for coordinated planning of emission control strategies to reduce the ozone pollutant burden. Urban scale models by themselves cannot provide the link from one source area to the next. In the paper the structural components of the more rigorous grid-type regional ozone models are described along with some of the issues that must yet be resolved to achieve credible regional scale simulations. Chief among these issues are the questions of the magnitude and photochemical effects of regional-scale biogenic organic emissions, the mass transfer from the lower to upper boundary layer by cloud fluxes, the lack of determinism in regional scale wind fields, and perhaps most critically, how to properly describe the subgrid scale chemical and physical processes within the enormous volume of a regional gridcell. The major components and recent applications of five representative regional scale air quality models are presented.