Theoretical Studies of Long-Range Transport of Oxidants. Final Report

摘要

The goal of the project was to develop a model with the capabilities of predicting ozone levels in rural areas. The focus was on long-term statistical measures of air quality. The effort was undertaken in concert with projects funded by NASA and NSF in which a large-scale 3-dimensional chemical tracer model (CTM) was developed for the purposes of studying global atmospheric processes. An 'ab initio' general circulation model (GCM) provides the dynamical framework for the CTM. The CRC project was intended to bring the global model to the regional scale, allowing simulation of mechanisms for production of rural ozone in a realistic dynamical framework. The report details results from four studies which were used to rigorously test the concepts to be employed in the fully coupled CTM. It was shown that the concentrations of ozone precursors in rural air are sufficient to produce significant levels of photochemical oxidant in 1-3 days. Thus, under stagnation conditions, rural ozone levels will become elevated due to local photochemistry.