Effect of radiation interaction and aerosol processes on ventilation and aerosol concentrations in a real urban neighbourhood in Helsinki

Abstract

Abstract. Large eddy simulation (LES) provides an optimal tool to examine air pollutant concentrations at high temporal and spatial resolutions within urban neighborhoods. The local mixing conditions are to a large extent a result of building morphology and thermal conditions impacting mechanically and thermally driven turbulence. However, the impact of thermal conditions on local air pollutant concentrations in real urban environments is not well understood nor the importance of including thermal processes in LES. Furthermore, LES of aerosol particle concentrations in urban areas rarely include aerosol processes, but rather aerosols are treated as passive scalars. The aim of this study is to examine the importance of radiative heating and aerosol processes in simulating local aerosol particle concentrations in a wide street canyon and its surroundings in Helsinki under morning rush hour with calm wind conditions using the LES model PALM. The model outputs are evaluated against mobile laboratory measurements of air temperature and total particle number concentration (Ntot), and drone measurements of lung deposited surface area (LDSA). The inclusion of radiation interaction in LES has a significant impact on simulated near surface temperatures in our study domain increasing them on average by 3.8 °C from 8.6 °C to 12.4 °C. The thermal processes further strengthen the flow field, and enhance the ventilation of air pollutants from the street canyon by altering the canyon vortex. The enhanced ventilation reduces the pedestrian level (4 m) Ntot by 53 %. The reduction of Ntot due to aerosol processes is smaller, only 18 %. Aerosol processes have a larger effect in the smallest particle range, decreasing particle concentrations below 10 nm by up to 2.5 orders of magnitude whereas radiation interaction is more important in the larger particle range. Aerosol processes have a stronger impact than ventilation on LDSA, whereas radiation interaction shows a larger decrease in PM2.5 than in other aerosol metrics. The inclusion of radiation interaction in PALM improves the modelled near-surface temperatures and Ntot when compared to mobile laboratory measurements reducing the bias between the modelled and measured temperatures from -3.9 °C to +0.2 °C, and concentrations from +98 % to -13 %. With both aerosol and radiation interaction on, the underestimation was 16 %, which might be due to overestimation of the ventilation. The results show how inclusion of radiative interaction, and to a lesser extent aerosol processes, on LES are important for realistic simulation of near surface aerosol particle concentrations. This particularly in a calm wind situation such as modelled in this study.

Air pollution trapping in the Dresden Basin from gray-zone scale urban modeling

“…As non-gaseous constituents, RRTM can consider aerosols and clouds, but in our current framework only clouds are considered by the mixing ratios of liquid water and cloud ice, and the effective particle radii, which are assumed to be 10 µm for cloud water and 30 µm for cloud ice. While additionally considering urban aerosol radiative effects can decrease the model temperature bias (e.g., Strömberg et al, 2023), it would significantly increase model complexity and also simulation time, because other aerosol species aside from the currently simulated BC had to be included. The radiative transfer equations are solved for the entire vertical extent of the troposphere and lower stratosphere, but of the required input data for clouds, only q c is provided with high spatial resolution within the vertical height range of the CAIRDIO computation domain.…”