The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model versions 5.3 and 5.3.1: system updates and evaluation

The Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 5.3 (CMAQ53), released to the public in August 2019 and followed by version 5.3.1 (CMAQ531) in December 2019, contains numerous science updates, enhanced functionality, and improved computation efficiency relative to the previous version of the model, 5.2.1 (CMAQ521). Major science advances in the new model include a new aerosol module (AERO7) with significant updates to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) chemistry, updated chlorine chemistry, updated detailed bromine and iodine chemistry, updated simple halogen chemistry, the addition of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) chemistry in the CB6r3 chemical mechanism, updated M3Dry bidirectional deposition model, and the new Surface Tiled Aerosol and Gaseous Exchange (STAGE) bidirectional deposition model. In addition, support for the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model's hybrid vertical coordinate (HVC) was added to CMAQ53 and the Meteorology-Chemistry Interface Processor (MCIP) version 5.0 (MCIP50). Enhanced functionality in CMAQ53 includes the new Detailed Emissions Scaling, Isolation and Diagnostic (DESID) system for scaling incoming emissions to CMAQ and reading multiple gridded input emission files. Evaluation of CMAQ531 was performed by comparing monthly and seasonal mean daily 8 h average (MDA8) O-3 and daily PM2 :5 values from several CMAQ531 simulations to a similarly configured CMAQ521 simulation encompassing 2016. For MDA8 O-3, CMAQ531 has higher O-3 in the winter versus CMAQ521, due primarily to reduced dry deposition to snow, which strongly reduces wintertime O-3 bias (2-4 ppbv monthly average). MDA8 O-3 is lower with CMAQ531 throughout the rest of the year, particularly in spring, due in part to reduced O-3 from the lateral boundary conditions (BCs), which generally increases MDA8 O-3 bias in spring and fall ( similar to 0 :5 mu gm(-3)). For daily 24 h average PM2:5, CMAQ531 has lower concentrations on average in spring and fall, higher concentrations in summer, and similar concentrations in winter to CMAQ521, which slightly increases bias in spring and fall and reduces bias in summer. Comparisons were also performed to isolate updates to several specific aspects of the modeling system, namely the lateral BCs, meteorology model version, and the deposition model used. Transitioning from a hemispheric CMAQ (HCMAQ) version 5.2.1 simulation to a HCMAQ version 5.3 simulation to provide lateral BCs contributes to higher O-3 mixing ratios in the regional CMAQ simulation in higher latitudes during winter (due to the decreased O-3 dry deposition to snow in CMAQ53) and lower O-3 mixing ratios in middle and lower latitudes year-round (due to reduced O-3 over the ocean with CMAQ53). Transitioning from WRF version 3.8 to WRF version 4.1.1 with the HVC resulted in consistently higher (1.0-1.5 ppbv) MDA8 O-3 mixing ratios and higher PM2:5 concentrations (0.1-0.25 mu gm(-3)) throughout the year. Finally, comparisons of the M3Dry and STAGE deposition models showed that MDA8 O-3 is generally higher with M3Dry outside of summer, while PM2:5 is consistently higher with STAGE due to differences in the assumptions of particle deposition velocities to non-vegetated surfaces and land use with short vegetation (e.g., grasslands) between the two models. For ambient NH3, STAGE has slightly higher concentrations and smaller bias in the winter, spring, and fall, while M3Dry has higher concentrations and smaller bias but larger error and lower correlation in the summer.

Automated summary

The CMAQ model version 5.3, released in August 2019, features significant updates in science, functionality, and computation efficiency compared to version 5.2.1. Major advances in the new model include enhanced aerosol, chlorine, bromine, and iodine chemistry, as well as updated deposition models. In addition, support for the WRF model's hybrid vertical coordinate was added. Evaluations of CMAQ531 show differences in O-3 and PM2:5 values compared to CMAQ521.