Year-long, high-resolution, urban airshed modelling: verification of TAPM predictions of smog and particles in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

CSIRO's coupled meteorological and pollutant chemical dispersion model, the Air Pollution Model (TAPM), and the EPA Victoria multi-pollutant emission inventory for the Port Phillip region (including Melbourne—covering a region of approximately 24,000 km 2) were used to simulate 1 year of hourly averaged air pollution concentrations for smog and particles, both without and with meteorological data assimilation. Model results have been compared with data from the EPA Victoria air-monitoring network. Results show that TAPM predicts year-long extreme concentration statistics (i.e. the high end of the distribution of concentrations over 1 year) for hourly averaged smog (NO 2 and O 3) to within 9%, and for 24-hourly averaged particles (PM 10 and PM 2.5) to within 13%, averaged across all monitoring sites, even when no local meteorological data are assimilated into the model. Results for paired-in-time measures such as correlation coefficient, factor-of-two and gross error, also show that TAPM is performing well, with average values (averaged over all monitoring sites) of 0.51, 0.76 and 0.38 for these measures, respectively. Results for the simulation with meteorological data assimilation were very close to those from the simulation without meteorological data assimilation. The good results obtained with the model also indicate that the emission inventory is of a high quality.