Impacts of Initial and Boundary Conditions of Meteorological Fields on PM Estimation via 3-D CTM: A Case Study of the KORUS-AQ Campaign

Abstract

The impact of initial and boundary conditions of meteorological fields on the estimations of particulate matter (PM) concentrations in South Korea are analyzed for the Korea-United States Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) campaign. As increasing of interest about PM concentrations, it has been a serious matter to forecast the accurate air quality. In this study, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Community Multi-Scale Air Quality (CMAQ) are used to conduct air quality modeling. Overall, models overestimate the surface wind speed. Therefore, low concentrations of PM were estimated during the stagnant period. Also, three models differently simulate the precipitations in long-range transport (LRT) period. Precipitations continuously affect the PM concentrations during LRT period. Overall, CMAQ predictions were resulted in RMSE between 40.17 μg/m3 to 44.31 μg/m3 (PM10) and 19.39 μg/m3 to 22.68 μg/m3 (PM2.5) by different meteorological initial and boundary conditions.