Impacts of future climate and emission changes on US air quality

Changes in climate and emissions will affect future air quality. In this work, simulations of regional air quality during current (2001-2005) and future (2026-2030) winter and summer are conducted with the newly released CMAQ version 5.0 to examine the impacts of simulated future climate and anthropogenic emission projections on air quality over the U.S. Current meteorological and chemical predictions are evaluated against observations to assess the model's capability in reproducing the seasonal differences. WRF and CMAQ capture the overall observational spatial patterns and seasonal differences. Biases in model predictions are attributed to uncertainties in emissions, boundary conditions, and limitations in model physical and chemical treatments as well as the use of a coarse grid resolution. Increased temperatures (up to 3.18 degrees C) and decreased ventilation (up to 157 m in planetary boundary layer height) are found in both future winter and summer, with more prominent changes in winter. Increases in future temperatures result in increased isoprene and terpene emissions in winter and summer, driving the increase in maximum 8-h average O-3 (up to 5.0 ppb) over the eastern U.S. in winter while decreases in NO emissions drive the decrease in O-3 over most of the U.S. in summer. Future PM2.5 concentrations in winter and summer and many of its components decrease due to decreases in primary anthropogenic emissions and the concentrations of secondary anthropogenic pollutants as well as increased precipitation in winter. Future winter and summer dry and wet deposition fluxes are spatially variable and increase with decreasing surface resistance and precipitation, respectively. They decrease with a decrease in ambient particulate concentrations. Anthropogenic emissions play a more important role in summer than in winter for future O-3 and PM2.5 levels, with a dominance of the effects of significant emission reductions over those of climate change on future PM2.5 levels. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.