Sensitivity Analysis of the Urban Airshed Model to Wind Fields Derived From the Regional Oxidant Model, Diagnostic Wind Model, and the URBMET/TVM Mesoscale Model

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has recommended the use of the Urban Airshed Model (UAM) with the Carbon Bond-IV chemical mechanism in evaluating the efficacy of emission control strategies and in determining controls necessary to reduce ambient ozone concentrations in urban areas to the level of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone. UAM applications to urban areas in the northeastern United States utilize a one-way nesting of the UAM with the Regional Oxidant Model (ROM) for deriving the wind fields for the UAM. However, diagnostic and prognostic meteorological modeling techniques are being explored as alternatives for the development of wind fields for the UAM. In this study, we present the sensitivity of the UAM-predicted ozone concentrations to the wind field derived from three different approaches. The three techniques are, (1) interpolation of ROM wind fields to the UAM using the ROM-UAM Interface system, (2) interpolation of the observed surface and upper-air data using a diagnostic model (DWM), and (3) interpolation of winds from a mesoscale planetary boundary layer model (URBMET/TVM).