H15-310: Regional air quality management assessment by using CHIMERE air quality model

Air quality models have been developed to better understanding the behaviour of the pollutants in the atmosphere, among other applications. One of them is about the influence of emission inventories and large sources on local and regional air quality. Another is the optimal design and assessment of air quality monitoring networks. This work aims at three different goals, (1) Optimal design of a regional air quality network: one-year high resolution (3 km2) meteorological and air quality simulations was applied to establish the past and future most polluted areas over the Galicia (NW of Spain). Simulations was built coupling WRF-ARW meteorological model to CHIMERE v. 2008c air quality model (validated with DELTA Tool), using 2008 year as meteorological basis. For past simulation, a detailed emission inventory was done, based in a combination of the Portuguese (area sources) and Galician (EMIGAL, point and area sources) emission inventories, with EMEP inventory for the year 2008. Future simulation considers a projection of emissions depending on the maxima authorized activities in the region. (2) To evaluate the effects of European air pollutants emissions between 2001 and 2008 over the ozone levels in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula (NWIP). Results show that no effect was obtained in the rural ozone levels of this region, due to the change of European emissions. (3) To evaluate the effect of removing all the emissions of the largest coal-fired power plant (1400 MW) in this region. In this case, a high resolution (3×3 km2) regional emissions inventory over NWIP was also applied, including more than 300 sources as point sources. Suppressing the power plant emissions derived in an increment of ozone levels around it; and, no effect in the ozone levels was observed over the NWIP region and surrounding areas.