Air Quality Forecast

University of Houston East Texas Air Quality Forecasting System

The greater Houston area must meet the existing one-hour ozone standards by 2007, and the new 8-hour standards by 2010.  Accurate meteorological and photochemical modeling efforts are essential to support the efforts for establishing the State Implementation Plan (SIP) by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

An air quality forecasting (AQF) system for East Texas has been developed to provide air quality data and to further facilitate retrospective simulations for model improvement and increased understanding of ozone episodes and emissions in the region.

The daily forecasting operation provides two-day air quality forecasting simulations at 12-km resolution for the East Texas regional domain, and at 4-km resolution for the Houston-Galveston area (HGA) and Dallas-Fort Worth domains, respectively. The dynamic boundary conditions are provided by the 36-km resolution conterminous US (CONUS) domain CMAQ simulations. Initial meteorological conditions are provided by the daily NCEP North American Mesoscale Model (NAM) forecast results. An alternative air quality forecast is provided utilizing the MM5 meteorological output from Texas A&M University . The results of individual runs are made available to the research community and to State and local officials here.

The project is supported financially by the U.S. EPA (Cooperative Agreement R-83037701, Development of Joint Multi-Pollutant Air Quality Modeling Facilities and Air Monitoring Stations for the Houston-Galveston Metropolitan Area) and TERC/HARC (Project H45C, East Texas Air Quality Forecasting). Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) provides key emissions inputs and technical assistance for the project.

Links to University of Houston Air Quality Forecasts:

• AQF Model Configurations

• UH Trajectory Analysis

Links to other AQ-related sites

• East Texas Air Quality (ETAQ) Forecasting Project: An Interactive Interface for East Texas Air Quality Information;  Collaboration between Baylor College of Medicine and UH IMAQS

• TCEQ Texas' Air Quality Today: TCEQ's air quality forecast page

• Texas A&M Weather Forecasts: Texas A&M forecasting web site

• Texas A&M Weather Forecasting Outputs: Texas A&M web site containing model output graphics

• University of Texas Ozone/PM2.5 Animations page: The University of Texas at Austin web site for TexAQS II ozone and PM2.5

• NOAA/EPA Air Quality Forecast: NOAA/EPA Air Quality Forecast Guidance - Southern Plains

• EPA AIRNow Air Quality Forecasts: AIRNOW Today's National Air Quality Forecast

• Infusing satellite Data into Environment Applications (IDEA): MODIS + model products, including trajectories

• NASA Langley Cloud And Radiation Research Products: Satellite Imagery And Cloud Products Page

• NOAA ETL TexAQS 2006 Trajectory: NOAA wind profiler-derived trajectories (realtime)

• GOES Imagery and Radar: Products in support of TexAQS/GoMACCS 2006 by Owen Cooper

• FLEXPART Products: Forecast products based on a combination of the GFS and FELXPART models (Owen Cooper)

• MODIS Rapid Response System: Real-time MODIS imagery, including fires

• GEOS Aerosol/Smoke Product (GASP): Near real-time GOES aerosol products

• Gulf of Mexico Atmospheric Composition and Climate Study (GoMACCS): MISR site for GoMACCS

Statistics Analysis and Evaluation:

PM10, PM2.5, Sulfate, Nitrate, Ammonium, Black carbon, Organic carbon, O3, NOx,NOy, TNMOC.

Evaluation:

• MM5 simulation : by surface and sounding data
• CMAQ : by AIRS, IMPROVE, CASTNET network data

Air Quality Modeling Flowchart

• ETA download start: 21 UTC (15 LST) on Apr 6
  Data content : 00 UTC Apr 8~ 00 UTC Apr 10 (2 days data)
• Forecast display time : 06 UTC (00 LST) on Apr 7
  (after 9 hours from ETA download)
• Forecasting target:
  for 2 days from 18 hours in advance at display time
  (00 UTC 8 Apr ~ 00 UTC 10 Apr)

Here is the scripting system to control and automate the whole workflow. The workflow can be easily altered by modifying the XML flow specifications.

The daily input data required will be grabbed on the Internet by this general-purposed DataSpider software.