Source apportionment modelling of PM2.5 using CMAQ-ISAM over a tropical coastal-urban area

Abstract

This study aims to explain the role of local emission sources to PM2.5 mass concentration in a tropical coastal-urban area, highly influenced by industrial and urban emissions, located in the Southeast of Brazil. The Integrated Source Apportionment Method (ISAM) tool was coupled with the chemistry and transport Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model (CMAQ-ISAM) to quantify the contribution of ten emission sectors of PM2.5. The simulations were performed over five months between spring 2019 and summer 2020 using a local inventory, which was processed by the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emission (SMOKE). The meteorological fields were provided by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-Urban) model. The boundary and initial conditions to the CMAQ-ISAM were performed by the GEOS-Chem model. The simulations results show that the road dust resuspension (36%) and point (17%) emissions sources were the major contributors to PM2.5 mass in the Metropolitan Region of Vitória (MRV). The boundary conditions (BCON), representing the transport contribution from sources outside the domain, were also a dominant contributor in the MRV (20% on average). Furthermore, the primary atmospheric pollutants emitted by the point (14%) and shipping (7%) sectors in the MRV also affected the cities located in the south region of the domain, strengthened by the wind fields that mostly come from the northeast direction.