MM5-CMAQ Air Quality Modelling Process Analysis: Madrid Case

Abstract

The usual application of three dimensional air quality models is to predict the spatial and temporal distributions of ambient air pollutants and other species. Third generation complex Eulerian models generate output concentrations by solving systems of partial differential equations. These equations define the timerate of change in species concentrations due to a series of physical and chemical processes (deposition, emission, chemical reactions, horizontal advection, etc.). MM5-CMAQ is configured in such a way that we can have access to quantitative information on the effects of the chemical reactions and other atmospheric processes that are being simulated. In this contribution we have configured an application of the MM5-CMAQ Air Quality Modelling System over the Madrid (Spain) regional domain and study the different physical and atmospheric processes. We have developed an expert analysis software package – which is intended to extent and improve in future works - to analyze in detail in a straightforward manner, all the information provided by the MM5-CMAQ modeling system, The huge amount of the output process analysis files (800 Mb NetCDF binary format) requires using these robust visualization packages. The results show that all the chemical and physical processes are filly consistent and the application of such a analysis will be extremely useful for decision taken processes in environmental offices at cities and regional environmental departments. This tool is essential to analyze in detail the process near specific areas of interest (industrial plants, special traffic concentrations, etc.).