Implementation of a high-resolution WRF-Chem CO tracer model in Buenos Aires, Argentina

FELIX CARRASCO; ANDREA PINEDA ROJAS; JUAN J. RUIZ

Breckendridge

Congreso; International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Science Conference; 2016

International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Project 2016

This study presents the implementation of a state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistrymodel over the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (MABA). The MABA is ahighly populated area with an estimated of more than three million of vehicles circulatingin approximately four thousand square kilometers. Even though the MABA has a goodvent due to the flat surroundings and regional atmospheric circulation, it is important tomonitor and study the evolution of pollutant concentrations given the intensity of thelocal sources and the size of the population potentially exposed to harmful concentrationsof contaminants. Few studies dealt with the high resolution three dimensionalatmospheric modelling of pollutants in MABA region. In this work we implemented theWRF-Chem model over MABA region using a high resolution area source emissioninventory of carbon monoxide (CO) (Venegas et al. 2011). The evaluation of the modelperformance in reproducing CO concentrations at several observations stations within thecity, under different large scale environmental conditions is presented. The emissioninventory for the MABA includes mobile sources (road traffic and airplanes) and fixedsources (residential, commercial and small industries activities). The test cases chosenwere: 10-14 november of 2009 and 2-7 June 2010 where we have available andcontinuous measurements at least two different locations within MABA. In these firstexperiments we model carbon monoxide concentrations considering it as a passivetracer. The configuration of the model includes 2 nested way with an inner domain of 1kilometer in which we test the sensibility of the modeled concentrations to three differentboundary layer parameterizations (YSU, MYJ and MYNN) representing the most commonschemes used in WRF-Chem. Results showing the evolution of CO concentrations as wellas the comparison with the observations will be presented at the conference.