Assessment of the sensitivity of model responses to urban emission changes in support of emission reduction strategies

© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The sensitivity of air quality model responses to modifications in input data (e.g. emissions, meteorology and boundary conditions) or model configurations is recognized as an important issue for air quality modelling applications in support of air quality plans. In the framework of FAIRMODE (Forum of Air Quality Modelling in Europe, https://fairmode.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) a dedicated air quality modelling exercise has been designed to address this issue. The main goal was to evaluate the magnitude and variability of air quality model responses when studying emission scenarios/projections by assessing the changes of model output in response to emission changes. This work is based on several air quality models that are used to support model users and developers, and, consequently, policy makers. We present the FAIRMODE exercise and the participating models, and provide an analysis of the variability of O3 and PM concentrations due to emission reduction scenarios. The key novel feature, in comparison with other exercises, is that emission reduction strategies in the present work are applied and evaluated at urban scale over a large number of cities using new indicators such as the absolute potential, the relative potential and the absolute potency. The results show that there is a larger variability of concentration changes between models, when the emission reduction scenarios are applied, than for their respective baseline absolute concentrations. For ozone, the variability between models of absolute baseline concentrations is below 10%, while the variability of concentration changes (when emissions are similarly perturbed) exceeds, in some instances 100% or higher during episodes. Combined emission reductions are usually more efficient than the sum of single precursor emission reductions both for O3 and PM. In particular for ozone, model responses, in terms of linearity and additivity, show a clear impact of non-linear chemistry processes. This analysis gives an insight into the impact of model’ sensitivity to emission reductions that may be considered when designing air quality plans and paves the way of more in-depth analysis to disentangle the role of emissions from model formulation for present and future air quality assessments.Peer reviewe

Understanding the dissipation of continental fog by analysing the LWP budget using idealized LES and in situ observations

Physical processes relevant for the dissipation of thick, continental fog after sunrise are studied through observations from the SIRTA observatory and idealized sensitivity studies with the large-eddy simulation model DALES. Observations of 250 fog events over 7 years show that more than half of the fog dissipations after sunrise are transitions to stratus lasting 2 hr or more. From the simulations, we quantify the contribution of each process to the liquid water path (LWP) budget of the fog. Radiative cooling is the main source of LWP, while surface turbulent heat fluxes are the most important process contributing to loss of LWP, followed by the absorption of solar radiation, the mixing with unsaturated air at the fog top and the deposition of cloud droplets. The loss of LWP by surface heat fluxes is very sensitive to the Bowen ratio, which is importantly affected by the availability of liquid water on the surface; in a run without liquid on the surface, fog dissipation occurred 85 min earlier than in the Baseline simulation. The variability of stratification and humidity above fog top is documented by 47 radiosondes and cloud radar. Using DALES, we find that the variability in stratification has an important impact on the entrainment velocity; a three times more rapid fog-top entrainment enables the cloud base to lift from the ground 90 min earlier in weak stratification than in strong stratification in the model. With relatively dry overlying air, the fog evaporates faster than if the air is near saturation, leading to 70 min earlier dissipation in our simulations. Continuous observations of the temperature and humidity profiles of the layer overlying the fog could therefore be useful for understanding and anticipating fog dissipation.</p

Radiation in fog: Quantification of the impact on fog liquid water based on ground-based remote sensing

International audienceRadiative cooling and heating impact the liquid water balance of fogs and therefore play an important role in determining their persistence or dissipation. We demonstrate that a quantitative analysis of the radiation-driven condensation and evaporation is possible in real-time using ground-based remote sensing observations (cloud radar, ceilometer, microwave radiometer). Seven continental fog events in mid-latitude winter are studied. The longwave (LW) radiative cooling of the fog is able to produce 40–70 g m−2 h−1 of liquid water by condensation when the fog liquid water path exceeds 30 g  m−2 and there are no clouds above the fog, which corresponds to renewing the fog water in 1–2 hours. The variability is related to fog temperature and atmospheric humidity, with warmer fogs below drier atmospheres producing more liquid water. The appearance of a cloud layer above the fog strongly reduces this cooling, especially a low cloud (up to 100 %), thereby perturbing the liquid water balance in the fog, and may therefore induce fog dissipation. Shortwave (SW) radiative heating by absorption by fog droplets is smaller than the LW cooling, but it can contribute significantly, inducing 10–15 g m−2 h−1 of evaporation in thick fogs at (winter) midday. We also find that the absorption of SW radiation by aerosols in the fog may strongly increase this evaporation rate if a large concentration of absorbing aerosols is present, but that this increase likely is below 30 % in most cases. The absorbed radiation at the surface can reach 40–120 W m−2 during daytime depending on the fog thickness. As in situ measurements indicate that 20–40 % of this energy is transferred to the fog as sensible heat, this surface absorption can contribute importantly to heating and evaporation of the fog, up to 30 g m−2 h−1 for thin fogs