Uncertainty in a chemistry-transport model due to physical parameterizations and numerical approximations: An ensemble approach applied to ozone modeling

International audienceThis paper estimates the uncertainty in the outputs of a chemistry-transport model due to physical parameterizations and numerical approximations. An ensemble of 20 simulations is generated from a reference simulation in which one key parameterization (chemical mechanism, dry deposition parameterization, turbulent closure, etc.) or one numerical approximation (grid size, splitting method, etc.) is changed at a time. Intercomparisons of the simulations and comparisons with observations allow us to assess the impact of each parameterization and numerical approximation and the robustness of the model. An ensemble of 16 simulations is also generated with multiple changes in the reference simulation in order to estimate the overall uncertainty. The case study is a four-month simulation of ozone concentrations over Europe in 2001 performed using the modeling system Polyphemus. It is shown that there is a high uncertainty due to the physical parameterizations (notably the turbulence closure and the chemical mechanism). The low robustness suggests that ensemble approaches are necessary in most applications

Ensemble-based air quality forecasts: A multimodel approach applied to ozone

International audienceThe potential of ensemble techniques to improve ozone forecasts is investigated. Ensembles with up to 48 members (models) are generated using the modeling system Polyphemus. Members differ in their physical parameterizations, their numerical approximations, and their input data. Each model is evaluated during 4 months (summer 2001) over Europe with hundreds of stations from three ozone-monitoring networks. We found that several linear combinations of models have the potential to drastically increase the performances of model-to-data comparisons. Optimal weights associated with each model are not robust in time or space. Forecasting these weights therefore requires relevant methods, such as selection of adequate learning data sets, or specific learning algorithms. Significant performance improvements are accomplished by the resulting forecasted combinations. A decrease of about 10% of the root-mean-square error is obtained on ozone daily peaks. Ozone hourly concentrations show stronger improvements

MICS Asia Phase II - Sensitivity to the aerosol module

International audienceIn the framework of the model inter-comparison study - Asia Phase II (MICS2), where eight models are compared over East Asia, this paper studies the influence of different parameterizations used in the aerosol module on the aerosol concentrations of sulfate and nitrate in PM10. An intracomparison of aerosol concentrations is done for March 2001 using different configurations of the aerosol module of one of the model used for the intercomparison. Single modifications of a reference setup for model configurations are performed and compared to a reference case. These modifications concern the size distribution, i.e. the number of sections, and physical processes, i.e. coagulation, condensation/evaporation, cloud chemistry, heterogeneous reactions and sea-salt emissions. Comparing monthly averaged concentrations at different stations, the importance of each parameterization is first assessed. It is found that sulfate concentrations are little sensitive to sea-salt emissions and to whether condensation is computed dynamically or by assuming thermodynamic equilibrium. Nitrate concentrations are little sensitive to cloud chemistry. However, a very high sensitivity to heterogeneous reactions is observed. Thereafter, the variability of the aerosol concentrations to the use of different chemistry transport models (CTMs) and the variability to the use of different parameterizations in the aerosol module are compared. For sulfate, the variability to the use of different parameterizations in the aerosol module is lower than the variability to the use of different CTMs. However, for nitrate, for monthly averaged concentrations averaged over four stations, these two variabilities have the same order of magnitude

A comparison study of data assimilation algorithms for ozone forecasts

International audienceThe Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (France) is planning the set-up of an automatic nuclear aerosol monitoring network over the French territory. Each of the stations will be able to automatically sample the air aerosol content and provide activity concentration measurements on several radionuclides. This should help monitor the French and neighbouring countries nuclear power plants set. It would help evaluate the impact of a radiological incident occurring at one of these nuclear facilities. This paper is devoted to the spatial design of such a network. Here, any potential network is judged on its ability to extrapolate activity concentrations measured on the network stations over the whole domain. The performance of a network is quantitatively assessed through a cost function that measures the discrepancy between the extrapolation and the true concentration fields. These true fields are obtained through the computation of a database of dispersion accidents over one year of meteorology and originating from 20 French nuclear sites. A close to optimal network is then looked for using a simulated annealing optimisation. The results emphasise the importance of the cost function in the design of a network aimed at monitoring an accidental dispersion. Several choices of norm used in the cost function are studied and give way to different designs. The influence of the number of stations is discussed. A comparison with a purely geometric approach which does not involve simulations with a chemistry-transport model is performed

Inverse modeling of NOx emissions at regional scale over northern France: Preliminary investigation of the second-order sensitivity

International audienceThe purpose of this article is to perform the inverse modeling of emissions at regional scale for photochemical applications. The case study is the region of Lille in northern France for simulations in May 1998. The chemistry-transport model, Polair3D, has been validated with 1 year of model-to-observation comparisons over Lille. Polair3D has an adjoint mode, which enables inverse modeling with a variational approach. A sensitivity analysis has been performed so as to select the emission parameters to be modified in order to improve ozone forecasts. It has been shown that inverse modeling of the time distribution of nitrogen oxide emissions leads to satisfactory improvements even after the learning period. A key issue is the robustness of the inverted emissions with respect to uncertain parameters. A brute force second-order sensitivity analysis of the optimized emissions has been performed with respect to other parameters and has proven that the optimized time distribution of NOx emissions is robust

Assessment of the detection abilities of monitoring networks for passive tracers at local and regional scales

International audienceWe propose a method to evaluate the detection abilities of networks used for protection purposes. Such networks are designed for the detection of nuclear, biological or gaseous emissions, without constraint on the source location. Their assigned goal is to have the best chance to detect a threatening emission located anywhere in the vicinity of a domain to protect. Two sensors siting applications are addressed: sensors placed in the surroundings of a facility to protect, or sensors carried by people scattered within a small area. A network protection ability is related both to its detection scope, and to its response time. To assess the performance of such networks, two statistical indicators are therefore designed: the detection probability, computed on a large number of possible source locations, and the saturation time, which is the time when the maximum detection probability has been reached. Simulations are then carried out with the Polyphemus air quality modeling system for many emission scenarios, including 961 possible source locations, various emitted species, and a few representative meteorological situations. This allows to assess the performance of single sensors as well as full networks, and their sensitivity to parameters like meteorological conditions and source characteristics. The emitted quantity and meteorological dispersion are found to be important parameters, whereas the species type does not significantly influence the results. Two network design methods are considered: (1) networks composed of a given number of the “best” sensors according to an indicator, and (2) sensors placed in circles around the protected domain. The networks built with respect to the detection probability show good results with a limited number of sensors, while the saturation time is not reliable enough to build networks. The networks based on circles also show a good performance in the studied cases, provided there is a sufficient number of sensors

Investigation of some numerical issues in a chemistry-transport model: Gas-phase simulations

International audienceMany numerical strategies have been specifically developed for chemistry-transport models. Since no exact solutions are available for 3-D real problems, there are only few insights to choose between alternative numerical schemes and approximations, or to estimate the performance discrepancy between two approaches. However it is possible to assess the importance of numerical approximations through the comparison of different strategies. We estimated the impact of several numerical schemes for advection, diffusion and stiff chemistry. We also addressed operator splitting with different methods and operator orders. The study is performed with a gas-phase Eulerian model from the modeling platform Polyphemus. It is applied to ozone forecasts mainly over Europe, with focus on a few key species: ozone, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydroxy radical. The outcome is a ranking of the most sensitive numerical choices. It stresses the prominent impact of the advection scheme and of the splitting time step

A review of current issues in air pollution modeling and simulation

International audienceAir pollution modeling is now a mature field, and comprehensive numerical models (the chemistry-transport models) are used in many applications. This article aims at reviewing the main issues from the point of view of applied mathematics and computational physics (as viewed by the author). We address topics such as subgrid parameterization, numerical algorithms with a focus on aerosol simulation, data assimilation and inverse modeling, reduction of high-dimensional models and propagation of uncertainties. Even if this article is strictly related to air pollution modeling, many issues and methods can be extended to dispersion of tracers in other media (for instance, water)

Box models versus eulerian models in air pollution modeling

International audienceBox models are widely used in air pollution modeling. They allow the use of simple computational tools instead of the simulation of 3D Eulerian grid models, given by a large set of partial differential equations. We investigate the theoretical justification of such box models. The key point is the comparison with the underlying Eulerian model describing the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere. We restrict the study to a vertical monodimensional case for more clarity. The main result is that the nonlinearity of the chemical kinetics, which is a characteristic feature of chemistry, induces the loss of accurac