Effects of downscaled high-resolution meteorological data on the PSCF identification of emission sources

Journal Article · Sat Apr 30 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Atmospheric Environment (1994)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2016.04.043· OSTI ID:1252147

Cheng, Meng -Dawn ^[1]; Kabela, Erik D. ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

The Potential Source Contribution Function (PSCF) model has been successfully used for identifying regions of emission source at a long distance in this study, the PSCF model relies on backward trajectories calculated by the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. In this study, we investigated the impacts of grid resolution and Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) parameterization (e.g., turbulent transport of pollutants) on the PSCF analysis. The Mellor-Yamada-Janjic (MYJ) and Yonsei University (YUS) parameterization schemes were selected to model the turbulent transport in the PBL within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF version 3.6) model. Two separate domain grid sizes (83 and 27 km) were chosen in the WRF downscaling in generating the wind data for driving the HYSPLIT calculation. The effects of grid size and PBL parameterization are important in incorporating the influ- ence of regional and local meteorological processes such as jet streaks, blocking patterns, Rossby waves, and terrain-induced convection on the transport of pollutants by a wind trajectory. We found high resolution PSCF did discover and locate source areas more precisely than that with lower resolution meteorological inputs. The lack of anticipated improvement could also be because a PBL scheme chosen to produce the WRF data was only a local parameterization and unable to faithfully duplicate the real atmosphere on a global scale. The MYJ scheme was able to replicate PSCF source identification by those using the Reanalysis and discover additional source areas that was not identified by the Reanalysis data. In conclusion, a potential benefit for using high-resolution wind data in the PSCF modeling is that it could discover new source location in addition to those identified by using the Reanalysis data input.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1252147
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1425708
• Journal Information: Atmospheric Environment (1994), Journal Name: Atmospheric Environment (1994) Vol. 137; ISSN 1352-2310
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Arctic
PSCF
WRF
aerosol
atmospheric transport
black carbon
boundary layer
climate change
downscale