A modeling tool that can resolve contributions from individual sources to the urban environment is critical for air-toxics exposure assessments. Air toxics are often chemically reactive and may have background concentrations originated from distant sources. Grid models are the best-suited tools to handle the regional features of these chemicals. However, these models are not designed to resolve...

The installation of roofing materials with increased solar reflectance (i.e., "cool roofs") can mitigate the urban heat island effect and reduce energy use. In addition, meteorological changes, along with the possibility of enhanced UV reflection from these surfaces, can have complex impacts on ozone and PM2.5 concentrations. We aim to evaluate the air-quality impacts of widespread cool-roof in...

Severe regional haze pollution events occurred in eastern and central China in January 2013, which had adverse effects on the environment and public health. Extremely high levels of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5) with dominant components of sulfate and nitrate are responsible for the haze pollution. Although heterogeneous chemistry is thought to play an i...

A coupled photosynthesis-stomatal conductance model with single-layer sunlit and shaded leaf canopy scaling is implemented and evaluated in a diagnostic box model with the Pleim-Xiu land surface model (PX LSM) and ozone deposition model components taken directly from the meteorology and air quality modeling system—WRF/CMAQ (Weather Research and Forecast model and Community Multiscale Air Qualit...

In recent years, considerable effort has been spent creating comprehensive, sub-regional emission inventories in the Pacific Northwest for use in policy reviews, planning and decision-making, and numerical modelling. Although part of an ongoing project for Environment Canada which involves a number of first-time innovations, the focus of this paper is on the steps undertaken to integrate these ...

Complex computer models play a crucial role in air quality research. These models are used to evaluate potential regulatory impacts of emission control strategies and to estimate air quality in areas without monitoring data. For both of these purposes, it is important to calibrate model output with monitoring data to adjust for model biases and improve spatial prediction. In this article, we pr...

In this paper, we present the custom Hong Kong NO2 retrieval (HKOMI) for the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board the Aura satellite which was used to evaluate a high-resolution chemistry transport model (CTM) (3 km× 3 km spatial resolution). The atmospheric chemistry transport was modelled in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in southern China by the Models-3 Community Multiscale Air Qu...

The authors presented their efforts in examining the spatial and temporal distributions of air pollutants over China, with a full year simulation and local observations. Although the WRF/CMAQ model has been applied in many studies over East Asia recently, this full year simulation helps to probe into the modeling discrepancy and stability. The manuscript generally introduced the performance but...