1.0 The NW-AIRQUEST Mission
NW-AIRQUEST seeks to develop, maintain, and enhance a sound scientific basis for air quality management decision-making in the Pacific Western Region of North America (encompassing the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska in the United States, and the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta in Canada.) This requirement is being approached through collaboration and sharing of experiences to remain abreast of the state-of-the-science and to develop regionally consistent technical approaches for emission inventories, air quality modeling, and air monitoring. NW-AIRQUEST cooperation enhances the effectiveness of member institutions in a mutually beneficial relationship while operating within the resource constraints of each member organization. NW-AIRQUEST collaborates to align science and management needs with the air programs of its member organizations.
2.0 NW-AIRQUEST Objectives:
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Providing sound scientific advice and direction to decision-makers for the management of air quality issues within the Region;
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Development, operation, and improvement of urban and regional numerical air quality forecast systems to form an archival database of simulated atmospheric data. A key effort will involve coordinating emission inventory and air quality observational databases for model application and evaluation;
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Development, evaluation, and application of tools for specific measurement and modeling studies to address particular issues, or to answer specific science questions related to air quality in the Pacific Western North America Region;
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Education, technology transfer, and communication to enhance understanding of current air quality issues, to improve capabilities among all members for using advanced modeling systems to address these issues, and to promote wide-spread communication of methods and results throughout the Region; and
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Collaboration with other scientific groups, particularly organizations with similar goals in other regions and organizations involved in the science disciplines associated with risk assessment.
3.0 NW-AIRQUEST Background
During the past ten years, scientists from government agencies and research institutions in southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States have been cooperating in an informal way to develop, evaluate, and apply advanced air quality models. This group has succeeded in leveraging related projects, sharing experiences, and developing regionally consistent approaches, and now seeks to broaden its effectiveness. Also, at the June 2003 Northwest Air Summit of the Northwest Collaborative Air Priorities Project in Seattle, nearly 200 participants from business, non profit organizations, and local, state, tribal, and federal governments reviewed the state of air quality in the region, presented their concerns, and identified their priorities; this resulted in a recommendation that included the statement that: air quality management decisions should be based on sound science.
4.0 NW-AIRQUEST Organization and Membership
NW-AIRQUEST embodies a virtual air quality science
center and depends on the active involvement of all its
sustaining members. Sustaining members ensure that
goals are met through consistent long-term
collaboration and collectively seek financial support
to meet the basic operation of the virtual air quality
science center.
The current sustaining members are:
* Environment Canada
* BC Ministry of Water, Lands and Air Protection
* University of British Columbia
* Greater Vancouver Regional District
* Idaho Department of Environmental Quality
* Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
* Puget Sound Clean Air Agency
* Southwest Clean Air Agency
* University of Washington
* U.S. EPA Region 10
* USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research
Station
* National Park Service, Pacific West Region
* Washington Department of Ecology
* Washington State University
* Oregon Department of Forestry
5.0 Current Projects
As described in the organizational charter, NW-AIRQUEST operates as a collaborative effort to share information and resources related to advances in measurements and modeling of air quality in our region. These efforts take place through specific studies initiated through normal agency contract procedures and through more general projects where funding is obtained from outside sources (national grants) or from regional EPA funds. In either case, discussions are held monthly by phone to review progress, discuss specific technical problems, and to share results among all of the NW-AIRQUEST participants. The following is a list of recent and current projects that are routinely shared in this manner. To a large extent, each of these projects share the common use of MM5 as a weather model and, in most cases, the use of the SMOKE emissions processing system to supply appropriate emission inventory data files. Transport and chemistry modeling are typically addressed using either the CALPUFF model or the EPA Community Multi-Scale Air Quality Model (CMAQ).
Project Title |
Sponsor |
Topic |
|
AIRPACT-3 |
Ecology (national air toxics grant) |
Incorporation of specific gaseous and particulate air toxics into automated daily simulation system and expansion of domain to include Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR |
|
BlueSky |
Forest Service |
Development and application of automated forecast system for PM2.5 related to forest fires |
|
ClearSky |
Ecology, Idaho DEQ |
Development and application of automated forecast system for PM2.5 related to agricultural field burning |
|
Climate Change Impact Analysis |
EPA STAR grant |
Extensive analysis of the impact of future global changes on regional and local air quality in the Pacific Northwest |
|
CMAQ for Region X |
EPA |
EPA Region X has been working to further application of CMAQ, and hosted a informal meeting June 3, 2005 in Seattle to discuss CMAQ and related topics. |
|
Columbia Gorge Footprint Analysis |
Ecology |
Analysis of elevated aerosol days at Gorge Improve sites with respect to upwind source areas |
|
Cumulative Effects Analysis |
EPA |
Initial development of modeling framework for consistent analysis methods for addressing cumulative effects related to PSD |
|
El WebCenter |
NW-AIRQUEST |
Establishment of an emission inventory data warehouse and resource center for the region |
|
Impact of diesel controls on PM2.5 |
Ecology |
Initial analysis of the impact of diesel controls on PM2.5 and ozone in Puget Sound |
|
Incorporation of Woodsmoke and Diesel Particulate Emissions into Airpact |
PSCAA |
Addition of woodsmoke PM2.5 emissions and mobile diesel PM2.5 emissions into the daily automated AIRPACT operations |
|
MM5 Ventilation Products Analysis |
PSCAA |
Analysis of correlations between MM5 ventilation products and observed pollutant levels |
|
Mode Evaluation Overview |
|
An Overview of Model Evaluation; Determine use of model output -- episodic or climatological Model Evaluation Working Group Meeting 200410051500 Topics discussed: - how good is good? - evaluation vs diagnosis - detailed comparison of limited data vs statistical comparison of large data sets - descriptive evaluation vs detailed objective evaluation - process used to obtain agreement - emissions inventory adjustment - substitute physics packages - episode tuning vs annual (or longer) evaluation - representativeness of observations at scale of modeling - handling sparse observations - use ensemble runs - sensitivity to specific key emission categories - producing real meteorology vs accurate meteorology - absolute contribution vw relative conribution - use of standard scoring protocols |
|
Nez Perce Project (overview) |
|
The deposition of nitrogen, sulfur and toxic compounds such as mercury and the resulting ecosystems effects is an emerging issue in the Pacific Northwest. Atmospheric deposition results from local, regional and global transport, and transformation in the atmosphere but the effects of the deposition are seen in surface water and ecosystems. Because these problems cross political boundaries and affect multiple media, they often fall through the cracks of the regulatory framework. The purpose of this workgroup is to provide a regional forum for atmospheric deposition issues, to foster coordinated scientific information sharing between monitoring, modeling and emission inventory efforts in the Pacific Northwest, and to explore connections with the research, resources and needs in other media, including water and biota. |
|
PAC2001 PM2.5 Modeling |
Environment Canada |
Evaluation and analysis of PM2.5 in Vancouver, BC airshed using CMAQ and the PAC2001 field campaign data sets |
|
PBL Improvements |
USDA Forest Service |
Validation and improvement of MM5 & WRF PBL schemes |
|
PNW2001 aerosol modeling |
UW |
Evaluation and analysis of PM2.5 and aerosol chemistry and dynamics using CMAQ and the PNW2001 field campaign data sets |
|
Portland 03 Precursor analysis |
ODEQ |
Development of new source guidelines with respect to ozone precursors in the Portland area |
|
Portland/Vancouver Ozone SIP Modeling |
SWCAA |
Application of MM5/SMOKE/CMAQ system to Portland/Vancouver ozone episodes and analysis of future control strategies |
|
Reasonable attribution analysis |
USDA Forest Service & National Park Service |
Development and appliation of an automated system for evaluating and monitoring sources of visibility impairment to Class 1 areas |
|
Smoke model verification |
USDA-USDOI Joint Fire Science Plan |
Development and application of an automated system for verifying BlueSky dispersion predictions |
|
Spokane Air Toxics Study |
|
|
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Transboundary Transport |
Environment Canada |
Assessment of the significance of international transboundary transport of air pollutants |
|
Treasure Valley Wintertime PM2.5 |
EPA Epscor grant |
Measurement and modeling of PM2.5 during stagnant wintertime conditions in Boise |