Title: Modelling different meteorological situations in Catalunya, Spain, with MM5 and TAPM mesoscale models: a comparative study

Authors: C. Soriano, R.M. Soler, D. Pino, M. Alarcon, B. Physick, P. Hurley

Addresses: Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Department of Applied Mathematics 1. Av. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. ' Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Department of Astronomy and Meteorology, Av. Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. ' Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), Edifici Nexus 204, Gran Capita, 2-4, 08034 Barcelona, Spain, and Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Department of Applied Physics, Jordi Girona s/n, Modul B4-B5, Campus Nord, 04034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Avda, Victor Balaguer s/n, 08800 Vilanova i la Geltru, Barcelona, Spain. ' CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Private Bag No. 1, Aspendale Vic. 3195, Australia. ' CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Private Bag No. 1, Aspendale Vic. 3195, Australia

Abstract: Meteorological simulations have been performed with two different mesoscale models: MM5 (PSU/NCAR-USA) and TAPM (CSIRO-Australia). Both models have been run under two different meteorological situations, typical for summertime and wintertime, allowing the models to be tested under different synoptic forcings. The study region for these mesoscale simulations is located in the interior of Catalonia, Spain, north of Barcelona, and can attain high pollution episodes despite not including important pollutant sources within the domain. Simulations have shown that the origin of the summertime pollution peaks in the region is the advection of air masses loaded with pollutants from the densely-populated region of Barcelona. Comparison of meteorological fields obtained with the two models have shown that, despite the much smaller computational resources needed by TAPM and being almost 10 times faster than MM5 in simulation time, both gave similar results, demonstrating thus the usefulness of TAPM as an alternative tool for air pollution management.

Keywords: mesoscale meteorological models; computational resources; sea-breeze; slope winds; sodar; pollutant advection; pollution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2003.004289

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2003 Vol.20 No.1/2/3/4/5/6, pp.256 - 268

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

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