Effects of model resolution on the interpretation of satellite NO 2 observations
By L. Valin, A. Russell, R. Hudman, Ronald C. Cohen. 2011
168 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract. Inference of NO x emissions (NO+NO 2 ) from satellite observations of tropospheric NO 2 column requires knowledge of NO x lifetime, usually provided by chemical transport models (CTMs). However, it is known that species subject to non-linear sources or sinks, such as ozone, are susceptible to biases in coarse-resolution CTMs. Here we compute the resolution-dependent bias in predicted NO 2 column, a quantity relevant to the interpretation of space-based observations. We use 1-D and 2-D models to illustrate the mechanisms responsible for these biases over a range of NO 2 concentrations and model resolutions. We find that predicted biases are largest at coarsest model resolutions with negative biases predicted over large sources and positive biases predicted over small sources. As an example, we use WRF-CHEM to illustrate the resolution necessary to predict 10 AM and 1 PM NO 2 column to 10 and 25% accuracy over three large sources, the Four Corners power plants in NW New Mexico, Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley in California for a week-long simulation in July 2006. We find that resolution in the range of 4–12 km is sufficient to accurately model nonlinear effects in the NO 2 loss rate.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9b3311a0eeda1fc3e4807ed21722918df8bc5341
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Citations in the corpus
- Variations of OH radical in an urban plume inferred from NO2 column measurements (2013, methodology): “Certainly the higher-resolution images expected from future geostationary satellites will be useful in that regard [Valin et al., 2011b].”