Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
C. Borrego and A.I. Miranda (Eds.), 496-504, ISBN 978-1-4020-8452-2, Springer, The
Netherlands.
Wong, D., J. Pleim, R. Mathur, F. Binkowski, A. Xiu, T. Otte, J. Young, and R. Gilliam, 2009,
WRF-CMAQ Two-way coupling system: overview,
Environ. Modeling Softw
., submitted.
4. Questions and Answers
C. Emery:
Regarding the ozone impacts from the western fires, were only aerosol
emissions added from fires to capture the AOD-SW-PBL-⊗O
3
effect, or did
you also add the fire NOx and VOC to include the chemistry impact of fires on
O3? If latter, how did you “tease” out just the aerosol effect?
Answer:
Yes, we did include emissions of NOx and VOCs from the fires in our
simulations. We conducted two sets of simulations with these emissions: one
with the radiative feedback effects of aerosol and the other without. The differ-
ence between these simulations was then used to estimate the impacts on short-
wave radiation, PBL heights, and subsequent effects on O
3
.
G Kallos:
You mentioned PBL effects due to short-wave radiation, but did not
mention effects from long-wave radiation.
Answer:
In limited early experiments, we have included effects of tropospheric
O
3
burden on the long-wave radiation, but have not found a significant
modulation of simulated PBL. Clearly, additional testing and verification is
warranted.
S. Lu:
Will EPA consider using the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)
that has been used at NOAA and NASA?
Answer:
In our initial design of the WRF-CMAQ system we did explore the
potential use of ESMF as a means to couple the two models; at that time the
framework did not appear to be ready to facilitate the level of coupling that was
needed between WRF and CMAQ models. We look forward to learning more
about the recent developments with ESMF from our NOAA and NASA
colleagues, and could consider using it in future versions of the model.
