First Implementation of the WRF-CHIMERE-EDGAR Modeling System Over Argentina

Air quality monitoring and research have been gaining importance in Argentina and Latin America, mainly in megacities where pollution reaches critical levels as in other places of the world. This work is a first attempt at simulating pollution levels at the country scale, in order to support air quality management and forecasting activities. We implemented the global scale inventory of anthropogenic emissions EDGAR v4.2 into the CHIMERE chemistry-transport model, driven by WRF meteorological fields, at a resolution of about 50 km, a performance evaluation of the modeling system is presented by the use of ground-based and satellite data. The lack of monitoring stations in the country constrained the evaluation to the March-May 2009 time period in three cities. We obtain a generally large underestimation of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, but a good simulation of the daily cycles. The magnitude of pollution levels is underestimated probably because of the misrepresentation of the monitoring stations (sites heavily affected by local traffic) and of the coarse resolution of the model. Nitrogen dioxide tropospheric column obtained by the OMI sensor (onboard Aura/NASA) was used to evaluate spatial correspondence with the simulation outputs, revealing that spatial features are broadly captured by the model. Further work would imply an emission inventory refinement and the use of other satellite data available considering other periods of time; however, a more dense and representative air quality monitoring network throughout the country is very much needed.