Abstract. Mineral dust particles play an important role in the Earth system,
imposing a variety of effects on air quality, climate, human health, and
economy. Accurate forecasts of dust events are highly desirable to provide
an early warning and inform the decision-making process. East Asia is one of the largest
dust sources in the world. This study applies and evaluates four widely used
regional air quality models to simulate dust storms in northeastern China.
Three dust schemes in the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry
(WRF-Chem) (version 3.9.1), two schemes in both CHIMERE (version 2017r4) and CMAQ
(version 5.2.1), and one scheme in CAMx (version 6.50) were applied to a
dust event during 4–6 May 2015 in northeastern
China. Most of these models were able to capture this dust event with the exception of
CAMx, which has no dust source map covering the study area; hence, another
dust source mask map was introduced to replace the default one for the
subsequent simulation. Although these models reproduced the spatial pattern
of the dust plume, there were large discrepancies between predicted and
observed PM10 concentrations in each model. In general, CHIMERE had
relatively better performance among all simulations with default
configurations. After parameter tuning, WRF-Chem with the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) scheme using
a seasonal dust source map from Ginoux et al. (2012) showed the best
performance, followed by WRF-Chem with the UOC_Shao2004 scheme,
CHIMERE, and CMAQ. The performance of CAMx had significantly improved by
substituting the default dust map and removing the friction velocity
limitation. This study suggested that the dust source maps should be
carefully selected on a regional scale or replaced with a new one constructed
with local data. Moreover, further study and measurement of sandblasting
efficiency of different soil types and locations should be conducted to
improve the accuracy of estimated vertical dust fluxes in air quality models.
Biomass burning (BB) emits a large quantity of aerosols and trace gases into the atmosphere, often leading to hazardous air quality and health problems (Koning, et al., 1985). In the summer of 2020, the western United States experienced a record-breaking wildfire season. A series of large wildfires, fueled by accumulated biomass, heatwaves, and dry winds, burned more than 10.2 million acres. These wildfires spread rapidly and destroyed several small towns in California, Oregon, and Washington. According to MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) measured FRP (fire radiative power) from 2002 to 2020 (Figure 1a), the monthly total FRP in September 2020 (big red dot) over the contiguous United States (CONUS) is the highest in over the past 19 years and is more than twice as large as the second highest. Dense wildfire smoke also produced hazardous air quality that affected millions of people in major cities for weeks. Based on Suomi NPP VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suit) 550 nm aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements, the fire smoke was transported across the continent to the eastern U. S. coast via the westerlies in the middle of September (Figure 1b).Previous studies (Cascio, 2018;C. E. Reid et al., 2016) demonstrated that a strong association exists between exposure to wildfire smoke and all-cause mortality and respiratory morbidity. Strong positive associations
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