In this study, the effects of an urban thermal environment on air quality were investigated using hourly surface weather observation data and air quality data over six summers from 2000 to 2005 in two cities on the Korean Peninsula. One, the city of Daegu, is representative of basin topography and the other, the city of Busan, represents a coastal area. It is known that the characteristics of an urban thermal environment are represented as an "urban heat island". Here, we focus on the nighttime urban thermal environment, which is called a "tropical night", during the summer. On tropical nights in Busan, the temperature and cloud cover levels were higher than on non-tropical nights. Wind speed did not appear to make a difference even on a tropical night. However, the frequency of southwestern winds from the sea was higher during tropical nights. The prevailing southwest winds in all areas meant an inflow of air from the sea. So at most of the air quality stations, the ozone concentration during tropical nights was lower than during non-tropical nights. In Daegu, the tropical nights had higher temperatures and cloud covers. Despite these higher temperatures, the ozone concentration during the tropical nights was lower than that on non-tropical nights at most of the air quality stations. This feature was caused by low irradiance, which in turn caused an increased cloud cover. Wind speed was stronger during the tropical nights and dispersed the air pollutants. These meteorological characteristics of the tropical nights reduced ozone concentrations in the Daegu Basin.
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are essential for forecasting one-day-ahead solar irradiance. In order to evaluate the performance of the WRF in forecasting solar irradiance over the Korean Peninsula, we compared WRF prediction data from 2008 to 2010 corresponding to weather observation data (OBS) from the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA). The WRF model showed poor performance at polluted regions such as Seoul and Suwon where the relative Root Mean Square Error (rRMSE) is over 30%. Predictions by the WRF model alone had a large amount of potential error because of the lack of actual aerosol radiative feedbacks. For the purpose of reducing this error induced by atmospheric particles, i.e., aerosols, the WRF model was coupled with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The coupled system makes it possible to estimate the radiative feedbacks of aerosols on the solar irradiance. As a result, the solar irradiance estimated by the coupled system showed a strong dependence on both the aerosol spatial distributions and the associated optical properties. In the NF (No Feedback) case, which refers to the WRF-only stimulated system without aerosol feedbacks, the GHI was overestimated by 50-200 W m-2 compared with OBS derived values at each site. In the YF (Yes Feedback) case, in contrast, which refers to the WRF-CMAQ two-way coupled system, the rRMSE was significantly improved by 3.1-3.7% at Suwon and Seoul where the Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations, specifically, those related to the PM10 size fraction, were over 100 g m-3. Thus, the coupled system showed promise for acquiring more accurate solar irradiance forecasts.
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