Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2.19 A Perspective on Development of Effective Ozone
Control Strategies in Urban Regions of South and
Central Texas
M. Zuber Farooqui
1
, Jhumoor Biswas
2
, Kuruvilla John
3
, and Saikat Ghosh
4
1
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
2
Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Kolkata, India
3
University of North Texas-Denton, Denton, TX, USA
4
Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Kingsville, TX, USA
Abstract
A regional photochemical modeling system is applied to multiple high
ozone episodes of September 13-20, 1999 and September 8-16, 2002 over urban
South and Central Texas to assess the relative impact of emissions on ozone levels.
Overall NO
x
emission reductions produced greater ozone benefits. The cities of
Austin and San Antonio exhibited greater sensitivity towards NO
x
emissions and
were affected most by on-road mobile emissions with zero-out emission simu-
lations. The coastal urban area of Corpus Christi indicated no significant bias towards
NO
x
or VOC emissions and was most affected by non-road mobile emissions. The
city of Victoria demonstrated greater sensitivity towards point sources. Emission
reduction strategies needed for maintaining air quality within any urban airshed
must be based on multiple ozone episodes in order to reduce episode-episode
variability in the effectiveness of emission control strategies.
Keywords
Ozone, photochemical modeling, multiepisode, emission sensitivity
runs, exceedances
1. Introduction
Ozone abatement strategies based mostly on regional scale photochemical modeling
simulations of single ozone episodes have been a vital part of the State Imple-
mentation Plans submitted to the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) by individual states. The model sensitivity to emission controls is contingent
on key input parameters of the models: meteorology and emissions. The impact of
meteorology on ozone processes has been well established (Brônnimann et al., 2002).
Emission control requirements based on one episode may be different from the
emissions controls based on another episode due to the impact of meteorological
