Physical and chemical improvements and validation of an air quality modelling system for Argentina, using satellite data

Abstract

Air quality monitoring and research have been gaining importance in Argentina and Latin America, mainly in megacities where pollution reaches critical levels. Another instrument very much used to study the atmospheric composition and its physical and chemical processes, and also to forecast air quality within a region, is a chemical transport model. These type of models estimates the conditions of the air we breath, concentration of pollutants at the superficial level and above, and how they are consumed/produced and transported by the meteorological conditions. The main objectives of the thesis is to improve the WRF-CHIMERE-EDGAR modeling system, already implemented in Argentina, considering a system evaluation using satellite information, and an operative implementation to produce an air quality forecast to population. The systems is integrated by an anthropogenic emission inventory EDGAR, a numerical forecast model WRF and chemical transport model CHIMERE. The system evaluation was performed in terms of daily total column density of NO2, CO and atmospheric optical depth, using satellite data from OMI, MOPITT and MODIS sensors, respectively. The spatial domain defined includes all continental Argentina and the period of time were march to may 2009 to evaluate NO2 in anthropogenic regular emission conditions, and december 2016 to february 2017 to evaluate the faith of vegetation fires pollutants emitted during a huge event in Northeast Patagonia. To do the latter, the APIFLAME fire emission model was implemented, that estimates the emission rate for each fire hot spot using dynamic and static data satellite that bring information about location, radiative power, vegetation cover, available biomass and emission factors. The evaluation of the modeling system with satellite information gives optimistic results about the spatial and temporal distribution of the atmospheric pollutants, though there is an emission subestimation from the emission inventories. Finally, at the CONAE website http://meteo.caearte.conae.gov.ar/wrf/chimere.phpthere is an operative implementation of the Air Quality Experimental Forecast WRF-CHIMERE-EDGAR, along with the descriptive documents and related publications; the fire emission forecast will be available in the next few months.