Use process analysis to assess predicted ozone formation in the United Arab Emirates

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  • March 21, 2019
Creator
  • Xu, Yadong
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Abstract
  • We used the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model simulation to study ozone formation in the United Arab Emirates. Model performance evaluation results indicate severe over-prediction of O3 and under-prediction of NO2 especially in the Abu Dhabi urban region with a normalized mean bias (NMB) for O3 at 179% and NO2 at -64% at urban monitoring site KHAF. We used the process analysis tools together with a postprocessor tool pyPA to investigate the possible factors causing the poor performance and assess potential major contributors to high ozone episodes in the model. The results indicate that the local photochemical production and advection processes were the main contributors to surface ozone in the UAE. We conducted two sensitivity runs in which NOx emissions are increased to understand model responses to different emission scenarios. Compared with the original model simulation, increasing the anthropogenic NOx emission rates by a factor of 6 in the Abu Dhabi urban region (the sensitivity run s2) caused significant predicted O3 decrease by up to 80 ppb. The system switched from NOx-limited condition in the original model run to NOx-inhibited condition in the sensitivity run s2.
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  • In Copyright
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  • "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Environmental Engineering (MSEE) in the department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering."
Advisor
  • Vizuete, William
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Place of publication
  • Chapel Hill, NC
Access right
  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • March 18, 2013

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