Local and urban scale modeling - Air Pollution Modeling and Its Application - page 59

1.12 High-Resolution Air-Quality Modelling
of the Windsor-Detroit Area Using Two Models:
Comparisons to BAQSMet Data

P.A. Makar 1 , J. Zhang 1 , W. Gong 1 , M.D. Moran 1 , C. Stroud 1 , S. Gong 1 ,
S. Gravel 1 , J. Brook 1 , K. Hayden 1 , C. Mihele 1 , S. Ménard 2 , D. Talbot 2 ,
H. Landry 1 , M. Sassi 2 , A. Kallaur 3 , D. Sills 4 , J. Abbatt 5 , and J. Slowik 5

1

Air Quality Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada,
[e-mail]
2

Air Quality Modelling Applications Section, Environment Canada, Montreal, QC, Canada

3

Air Quality Research Division, Environment Canada, Montreal, QC, Canada

4

Meteorological Research Division, Environment Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada

5

Chemistry Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

The Border Air-Quality Study and Meteorology Study (BAQS-Met) was conducted
in the region between Lakes Huron, St. Clair, and Erie, with the aim of studying the
impact of lake breezes on local air-quality and long-range-transported chemistry.
The study comprised a measurement-intensive field campaign from June 22 to
July 10, 2007 as well as a local monitoring network that operated from the months
of June through August. Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometers (AMS) were used
at two supersites (Bear Creek and Harrow) and on board the NRC Twin Otter
aircraft and Environment Canada (EC)'s CRUISER mobile laboratory as part of
the study. Also measured aboard the aircraft were O 3 , CO, SO 2 , NO/NO 2 , particle
size distribution and number. CRUISER observations also included CO, O 3 , SO 2 ,
NO/NO 2 , NOy, CO 2 , selected VOCs, Black Carbon, and particle number.
EC's A Unified Regional Air-Quality Modelling System (AURAMS, cf. Cho
et al., 2009; Gong et al., 2006) was used for in-field forecastting, and for subsequent
analysis using a three-level nested system (42 km/15 min resolution North
American domain driving a 15 km/15 min. Eastern North America hence a 2.5
km/2 min study domain). AURAMS is a 3D gas and speciated/size-resolved (bin
approach) regional transport model which makes use of meteorology provided by
the 15 and 2.5 km versions of the Global Environment Multiscale (GEM) model
(Côté et al., 1998). Each of the AURAMS simulations makes use of a 12 size bin,
eight chemical species particulate module (sulphate, nitrate, ammonium, primary
organic carbon, secondary organic carbon, elemental carbon, crustal material, sea-salt).
GEM-MACH is a new model being developed at Environment Canada primarily
for operational AQ forecasting, following from earlier work with both AURAMS
(Gong et al., 2006) and GEM-AQ (Kaminski et al., 2008), incorporating much of
the process science of AURAMS “on-line” into GEM. The configuration used