A43J-06:
Evaluating CMAQ Simulations of Ammonia Sources, Formation and Impacts using Surface, Aircraft, and Satellite Data
Thursday, 18 December 2014: 2:55 PM
Chantelle Rose Lonsdale1, Matthew James Alvarado1, Karen Elena Cady-Pereira1, Jennifer Diane Hegarty2, Daven K Henze3, John B Nowak4, Jennifer G Murphy5, Raluca Ellis5, Trevor C VandenBoer6 and Milos Z Markovic7, (1)Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Lexington, MA, United States, (2)AER, Inc., Lexington, MA, United States, (3)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica, MA, United States, (5)University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, (6)Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, NL, Canada, (7)Environment Canada Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Abstract:
Ammonia (NH3) can serve as an aerosol precursor and thus can impact air quality and the radiative budget of the Earth. Uncertainty in NH3 emissions lead to uncertainty in the formation, vertical distribution, and radiative impacts of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate aerosol, which in turn leads to significant uncertainties in predictions of air quality and future climate. Here we present preliminary results of evaluating NH3 sources, aerosol formation, and their impacts during the 2010 NOAA CalNex and 2013 NOAA Southeast Nexus (SENEX) field campaigns (in LA and the Central Valley of California and the Southeast US, respectively). We use the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) driven with meteorological fields from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate NH3. Model results are compared to surface and aircraft measurements of aerosol inorganics and gas-phase NH3, HNO3, NOx, and SO2 during each campaign, as well as satellite NH3 observations from the NASA Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and the NOAA Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) for each region.
