Decadal application of WRF/Chem over the continental U.S.: Simulation design, sensitivity simulations, and climatological model evaluation

The WRF/Chem v3.7 is applied to 2001–2010 over the continental U.S. using National Emission Inventory (NEI). This study will provide baseline simulation for a future work investigate impacts of both climate and emission changes on regional air quality human health. paper focuses current year design, comprehensive model evaluation, sensitivity simulations that demonstrate different reinitialization setup, cloud physical schemes, inventories predictions. Nine one-month by setup microphysics cumulus parameterizations are first conducted optimal configurations. performance in predicting meteorology decadal scale further evaluated against available surface, satellite, reanalysis data. NEI emissions (referred as NEI) performs well major meteorological variables such T2, RH2, WS10, precipitation shows good radiation SWDOWN, OLR, SWCF. Large biases still exist due limitations dynamics/thermodynamics treatments uncertainties associated with satellite retrievals. also predicts O3 PM2.5 terms spatiotemporal distribution. Compared previous Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5) emissions, better most variables, especially radiative forcing representation processes variations more accurate inventory. evaluation results this within range or than other studies lay foundation realistic projection work.