Improvement of chemical initialization in the air quality forecast system in North Macedonia, based on WRF-Chem model

AbstractUrban air quality is determined by a complex interaction of factors associated with anthropogenic emissions, atmospheric circulation, and geographic factors. Most of the urban-present pollution aerosols and trace gases are toxic to human health and responsible for damage of flora, fauna, and materials. The air quality prediction system based on state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) has been configured and designed for North Macedonia. An extensive set of experiments have been performed with different model settings to forecast simultaneously the weather and air quality over the country. The initial results and the finding from other similar studies suggest that chemical initialization plays a significant role in a more accurate, both qualitative and quantitative forecast and assessment of urban air pollution. The main objective of the present research is to develop and test for a novel chemical initialization input in the air quality forecast system in North Macedonia. It is performed using ensemble technique in respect to treatment of the mobile emissions data using scaling factors. The WRF-Chem prediction has shown a high sensitivity to different scaling methods. While scaling of the overall mobile annual emissions tends to produce some discrepancies regarding the PM10 concentration level (overestimation during summer and underestimation during winter), an improved approach that utilizes scaling, in a wider range, ...
Source: Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health - Category: Environmental Health Source Type: research