Six ARL Scientists to Present at Upcoming Community Modeling and Analysis System (CMAS) Conference

September 2018

Barry Baker, Tianfeng Chai, Hyun Cheol Kim, Pius Lee, Youhua Tang, and Daniel Tong will present at the upcoming 17th Annual CMAS Conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This event, taking place October 22-24, 2018, connects members of the atmospheric modeling and model research communities, encouraging shared experiences with air quality models, modeling, and model development. ARL’s scientists are presenting a combination of papers and posters as noted below.

Hyun Cheol Kim will present “Reconstruction of surface nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations using a conservative downscaling of Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2), and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)” in the session on Remote Sensing/Sensor Technology and Measurements Studies. This presentation deals with a conservative downscaling designed to enhance the spatial resolution of satellite measurements by applying the fine-scale spatial structure from the model with strict mass conservation at each satellite footprint pixel level. Dr. Kim will also present a poster in the Model Development session titled, “Top-down Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) Emissions Estimation using a Perfect Model Assumption and Deep Neural Networks,” which addresses chemical nonlinearity and physical uncertainties inherent in using observational data from satellite and monitoring sites to model regional air quality. Discussion will center on an ARL-developed, Python-based emission inverse modeling framework using a perfect model assumption and a newly-developed machine learning technique; using pseudo-observations to mimic real world observations and train the system to both learn them and regenerate accurate results from them.

During the session on Model Evaluation and Analysis, Pius Lee will present “Potential performance differences of the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) when upgrading the Chemical Transport Model.” Focusing on upgrading NAQFC with a gas chemistry, with inclusion of halogen chemistry, this presentation will discuss employment of more explicit speciation for isoprene and monoterpenes from biogenic sources. Dr. Lee will also highlight upgrades of the aerosol module using a more sophisticated secondary aerosol production suite of multi-generational oxidation mechanisms that deploys a fuller set of National Emission Inventory better aligned to CMAQ version 5.2. Also during this session, Barry Baker will present a poster titled, “Updates and improvements to the Model and ObservatioN Evaluation Toolkit (MONET),” summarizing key updates in v2.0 of this Python-based tool for model evaluation, visualization, and data analysis. Discussion will focus on MONET’s transformation to allow more user flexibility while maintaining design functionality; providing an easy and compact way to load, combine, and analyze atmospheric models and datasets.

In addition to Dr. Kim, the session on Model Development will also feature Daniel Tong and Tianfeng Chai. Dr. Tong will present “Recent developments of FENGSHA dust emission module: Lessons learned from multi-year real-time dust forecasting over North America.” The FENGSHA model, which translates to windblown dust in Mandarin, continues to support and enhance NAQFC forecasting for North America. This talk will feature observations and statistics, along with plans for future development of, and applications for, FENGSHA within NOAA forecasting. Dr. Chai’s talk, “Estimating smoke emission using GOES satellite observations and HYSPLIT model,” will describe the use of an inverse modeling technique to estimate wildfire smoke emissions using NOAA’s HYSPLIT model and GOES Aerosol/Smoke products (GASP). This top-down approach quantifies the differences between model predictions and satellite measurements of columns of integrated air concentrations.

Finally, Youhua Tang will present a poster titled, “A Case Study for Hawaii Volcano Eruption in 2018″ in the session on Emissions Inventories, Models, and Processes. This poster illustrates observations of significant SO2 and PM2.5 enhancements during the sustained eruption of Mt. Kilauea in May and June 2018. Discussion will focus on the methods used to study the events and verify the results, including use of monitoring data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, utilization of the North American Mesoscale model driven by CMAQ 5.0.2, and a combination of in-situ measurements and satellite retrievals.

For more information, please visit: https://www.cmascenter.org/conference/2018/agenda.cfm