Impact of HONO sources on the performance of mesoscale air quality models》.pdf

Atmospheric Environment 54 (2012) 168e176 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Atmospheric Environment journal homepage: www.elsevi /locate/atmosenv Impact of HONO sources on the performance of mesoscale air quality models M. Gonçalves a, b, *, D. Dabdub c, W.L. Chang c, O. Jorba b, J.M. Baldasano a, b a Environmental Modeling Laboratory, Projects Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain b Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain c Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Nitrous acid (HONO) photolysis constitutes a primary source of OH in the early morning, which leads to Received 18 November 2011 changes in model gas-phase and particulate matter concentrations. However, state-of-the-art models of Received in revised form chemical mechanisms share a common representation of gas-phase chemistry leading to HONO that fails 8 February 2012 in reproducing the observed profiles. Hence, there is a growing interest in improving the definition of Accepted 24 February 2012 additional HONO sources within air quality models, i.e. direct emissions or heterogeneous reactions. In order to test their feasibility under atmospheric conditions, the WRF-ARW/HERMES/CMAQ modeling Keywords: