Calendar Event Details
AEROCENTER: Mariel Friberg
Affiliation: Georgia Tech
Event Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Location: G133
Time: 11:00 AM
Blending Measurements and Models for Air Quality Applications
Large population epidemiologic studies investigating acute health effects of ambient air pollution rely on accurate estimates of the spatial and temporal variation for a number of monitored air pollutants. Spatial coverage of air quality monitoring networks is sparse, and many pollutants of interest are not measured daily. Emissions-based air quality modeling provides complete spatial and temporal coverage, but has well-known biases. A method is developed for fusing ambient monitor measurements and 12-km resolution chemical transport model outputs to estimate ground-level air pollutant concentrations, optimizing the prediction of temporal variance. The method is applied to daily metrics of 12 pollutants (CO, NO2, NOx, O3, SO2, PM10, PM2.5, and five PM PM2.5 components) over the state of Georgia for a seven-year period (2002-2008). Cross-validation demonstrates a wide range in model performance across pollutants, with one-hour maximum SO2 predicted most poorly due to limitations in modeling of coal combustion plumes. For the other 11 pollutants studied, 54-88% of the variance in concentrations was captured over the 7-year time period, with eight-hour maximum ozone and 24-hour PM2.5 predicted best. The data fusion approach developed provides daily estimates of spatial fields of air pollutant concentrations and uncertainties that are consistent with observations, emissions, and meteorology.
Posted or updated: Wednesday, June 3, 2015
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