Source impact quantification of anthropogenic and biogenic emissions on regional ozone in the Mexico-U.S. border area using direct sensitivity analysis
Transboundary air pollution between the US and Mexico has received increased attention since the late '70s. The Mexico-US border area provides the opportunity to investigate ozone air pollution at urban and rural scales in the presence of very different anthropogenic and biogenic emission characteristics. In order to elucidate the impact of control strategies to reduce air pollution levels, an understanding of pollutant transport across the border is necessary, as well as a characterization of major anthropogenic and biogenic emission sources of ozone precursors. A previous air quality modeling study of the border area lacked a biogenic emissions inventory. In this study, an episodic biogenic hydrocarbon and nitric oxide emission inventory was developed for the Mexico-US border area using GIS data and the Biogenic Emissions Inventory System (BEIS2). Then, the evolution of air pollutants was simulated using an Eulerian photochemical airshed model with the emission inventory accounting for both anthropogenic and biogenic emissions. Ground-level ozone was compared with a previous simulation that only incorporated anthropogenic emissions. Ozone levels increased throughout the domain, especially in the urban areas. Model performance, in general, improved against the run without biogenics, though results were biased towards ozone overprediction. The sensitivity of the ozone field to biogenic and anthropogenic emissions was calculated using a decoupled direct method for three dimensional air quality models (DDM-3D). DDM-3D revealed NO{sub x}-inhibited and VOC-limited areas. Finally, DDM-3D was used to analyze quantitatively the impact of different emission sources on ground-level ozone at urban and rural scales.
- Research Organization:
- Georgia Inst. of Tech., Atlanta, GA (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20006520
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608-; TRN: IM200008%%127
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Air and Waste 92nd Annual Meeting and Exhibition, St. Louis, MO (US), 06/20/1999--06/24/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating Systems: Windows 3.1, '95, '98 and NT; Macintosh; and UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Air and Waste 92nd annual meeting and exhibition proceedings, [9500] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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