Is regional air quality model diversity representative of uncertainty for ozone simulation ?

Robert Vautard (1, 2) , M. van Loon (3) , M. Schaap (4) , R. Bergstrom (5) , Bertrand Bessagnet (6) , J. Brandt (7) , P. Builtjes (4) , J.H. Christensen (7) , C. Cuvelier (8) , A. Graff (9) , J.E. Jonson (3) , M. Krol (10) , J. Langner (5) , P. Roberts (11) , Laurence Rouil (6) , R. Stern (12) , L. Tarrason (3) , P. Thunis (8) , E. Vignati (8) , L. White (13) , Philippe Wind (3)

1 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
2 ESTIMR - Extrèmes : Statistiques, Impacts et Régionalisation
3 MSC-W - EMEP Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West
4 TNO - The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research
5 SMHI - Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
6 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques
7 National Environment Research Institute
8 IES - JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability
9 Übergreifende Angelegenheiten der Luftreinhaltung
10 IMAU - Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research [Utrecht]
11 Shell Global / HSE Department
12 Institut für Meteorologie [Berlin]
13 Conservation of Clean Air and Water in Europe

We examine whether seven state-of-the-art European regional air quality models provide daily ensembles of predicted ozone maxima that encompass observations. Using tools borrowed from the evaluation of ensemble weather forecasting, we analyze statistics of simulated ensembles of ozone daily maxima over an entire summer season. Although the model ensemble overestimates ozone, the distribution of simulated concentrations is representative of the uncertainty. The spread of simulations is due to random fluctuations resulting from differences in model formulations and input data, but also to the spread between individual model systematic biases. The ensemble average skill increases as the spread decreases. The skill of the ensemble in giving probabilistic predictions of threshold exceedances is also demonstrated. These results allow for optimism about the ability of this ensemble to simulate the uncertainty of the impact of emission control scenarios.

Keywords: ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE : POLLUTION : URBAN AND REGIONAL : ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE : TROPOSPHERE : CONSTITUENT TRANSPORT AND CHEMISTRY; ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE : POLLUTION : URBAN AND REGIONAL : ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE : TROPOSPHERE : CONSTITUENT TRANSPORT AND CHEMISTRY.

Domains: Environmental Sciences

Robert Vautard, M. van Loon, M. Schaap, R. Bergstrom, Bertrand Bessagnet, et al.. Is regional air quality model diversity representative of uncertainty for ozone simulation ?. Geophysical Research Letters, 2006, 33 (24), pp.art n° L24818. ⟨10.1029/2006GL027610⟩. ⟨ineris-00963044⟩