Contribution of Source Emissions in the Air Pollution Modeling - a WRF/Chem Case Study

We investigate the capability of the WRF/Chem model in the simulation of some criteria air pollutants, during a major air pollution episode between 16 and 21 December 2017. In this study, by employing the EDGAR-HTAP_v2 global emissions data in the WRF/Chem model, we evaluate the simulations of the surface mixing ratios of NO2, SO2, and CO. The RADM2 chemical mechanism with MADE-SORGAM aerosol scheme has been used as the chemical option of the WRF/Chem model, to simulate the meteorology-chemistry interactions. The variations of the time series of the pollutants and the comparisons of the results in Tehran with the measurement data showed that although the WRF/Chem simulations in Tehran presented considerable over-estimations, but the model’s performance with regard to the time variations of the concentrations of the gaseous agents over the polluted episode is acceptable, and therefore, could be considered in the operational air quality systems. Since emission data are not available for many metropolitan areas over Iran, the HTAP_v2 global dataset could be used as the emissions data with reliable accuracy for the numerical air quality models.