Evaluation of the NAQFC driven by the NOAA Global Forecast System (version 16): comparison with the WRF-CMAQ during the summer 2019 FIREX-AQ campaign

Abstract. The latest operational National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) has been advanced to use the Community Multiscale (CMAQ) model (version 5.3.1) with CB6r3 (Carbon Bond 6 revision 3) AERO7 7 of aerosol module) chemical mechanism and is driven by Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3) Global System, version 16 (GFSv16). This update accomplished via development meteorological preprocessor, NOAA-EPA Atmosphere–Chemistry Coupler (NACC), adapted from existing Meteorology–Chemistry Interface Processor (MCIP). Differing typically used Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) CMAQ system in air quality research community, interpolation-based NACC can various outputs drive (e.g., FV3-GFSv16), even though they are on different grids. In this study, we compare evaluate GFSv16-CMAQ WRFv4.0.3-CMAQ using observations over contiguous United States (CONUS) summer 2019 that have verified surface AIRNow observations. During period, Fire Influence Regional Environments (FIREX-AQ) field campaign was performed, two models airborne measurements NASA DC-8 aircraft. GFS-CMAQ WRF-CMAQ systems show similar performance overall some differences for certain events, species regions. GFSv16 meteorology tends a stronger diurnal variability planetary boundary layer height (higher during daytime lower at night) than WRF US Pacific coast, it also predicted nighttime 10 m winds. 2019, showed better ozone (O3) night CONUS domain; however, models' fine particulate matter (PM2.5) predictions mixed verification results: yielded mean biases but poorer correlations coast. These results indicate global directly interpolation feasible yields reasonable compared commonly approach.