[1] This study investigates whether probabilistic ozone forecasts from an ensemble can be made with skill: i.e., high verification resolution and reliability. Twenty-eight ozone forecasts were generated over the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada, for the 5-day period 11-15 August 2004 and compared with 1-hour averaged measurements of ozone concentrations at five stations. The forecasts were obtained by driving the Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) model with four meteorological forecasts and seven emission scenarios: a control run, ±50% NO x , ±50% volatile organic compounds (VOC), and ±50% NO x combined with VOC. Probabilistic forecast quality is verified using relative operating characteristic curves, Talagrand diagrams, and a new reliability index. Results show that both meteorology and emission perturbations are needed to have a skillful probabilistic forecast system: the meteorology perturbation is important to capture the ozone temporal and spatial distribution and the emission perturbation is needed to span the range of ozone concentration magnitudes. Emission perturbations are more important than meteorology perturbations for capturing the likelihood of high ozone concentrations. Perturbations involving NO x resulted in a more skillful probabilistic forecast for the episode analyzed, and therefore the 50% perturbation values appear to span much of the emission uncertainty for this case. All of the ensembles analyzed show a high ozone concentration bias in the Talagrand diagrams, even when the biases from the unperturbed emissions forecasts are removed from all ensemble members. This result indicates nonlinearity in the ensemble, which arises from both ozone chemistry and its interaction with input from particular meteorological models.
[1] The Kalman filter (KF) is a recursive algorithm to estimate a signal from noisy measurements. In this study it is tested in predictor mode, to postprocess ozone forecasts to remove systematic errors. The recent past forecasts and observations are used by the KF to estimate the future bias. This bias correction is calculated separately for, and applied to, 12 different air quality (AQ) forecasts for the period 11-15 August 2004, over five monitoring stations in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada, a population center in a complex coastal mountain setting. The 12 AQ forecasts are obtained by driving an AQ Model (CMAQ) with two mesoscale meteorological models (each run at two resolutions) and for three emission scenarios (Delle Monache et al., 2006). From the 12 KF AQ forecasts an ensemble mean is calculated (EK). This ensemble mean is also KF bias corrected, resulting in a high-quality estimate (KEK) of the short-term (1-to 2-day) ozone forecast. The Kalman filter predictor bias-corrected ensemble forecasts have better forecast skill than the raw forecasts for the locations and days used here. The corrected forecasts are improved for correlation, gross error, root mean square error, and unpaired peak prediction accuracy. KEK is the best and EK is the second best forecast overall when compared with the other 12 forecasts. The reason for the success of EK and KEK is that both the systematic and unsystematic errors are reduced, the first by Kalman filtering and the second by ensemble averaging.
[1] A new Ozone Ensemble Forecast System (OEFS) is tested as a technique to improve the accuracy of real-time photochemical air quality modeling. The performance of 12 different forecasts along with their ensemble mean is tested against the observations during 11-15 August 2004, over five monitoring stations in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada, a population center in a complex coastal mountain setting. The 12 ensemble members are obtained by driving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Models-3/Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) with two mesoscale meteorological models, each run at two resolutions (12-and 4-km): the Mesoscale Compressible Community (MC2) model and the Penn State/NCAR mesoscale (MM5) model. Moreover, CMAQ is run for three emission scenarios: a control run, a run with 50% more NO x emissions, and a run with 50% fewer. For the locations and days used to test this new OEFS, the ensemble mean is the best forecast if ranked using correlation, gross error, and root mean square error and has average performance when evaluated with the unpaired peak prediction accuracy. Ensemble averaging removes part of the unpredictable components of the physical and chemical processes involved in the ozone fate, resulting in a more skilful forecast when compared to any deterministic ensemble member. There is not one of the 12 individual forecasts that clearly outperforms the others on the basis of the four statistical parameters considered here. A lagged-averaged OEFS is also tested as follows. The 12-member OEFS is expanded to an 18-member OEFS by adding the second day from the six 12-km ''yesterday'' forecasts to the ''today'' ensemble forecast. The 18-member ensemble does not improve the ensemble mean forecast skill. Neither correlation nor a relationship between ensemble spread and forecast error is evident.
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