Title: Comparison between different dynamical downscaling methods using WRF-Chem for urban applications: Madrid case study

Authors: Roberto San José; Juan L. Pérez; Julia Pecci; Antonio Garzón; Marino Palacios

Addresses: Environmental Software and Modelling Group, Computer Science School, Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain ' Environmental Software and Modelling Group, Computer Science School, Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain ' Indra S.A., C/ Mar Egeo, 4, Pol. Industrial 1, 28830 San Fernando de Henares, Madrid, Spain ' Indra S.A., C/ Mar Egeo, 4, Pol. Industrial 1, 28830 San Fernando de Henares, Madrid, Spain ' Indra S.A., C/ Mar Egeo, 4, Pol. Industrial 1, 28830 San Fernando de Henares, Madrid, Spain

Abstract: The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is used to provide boundary conditions for the mesoscale model WRF-Chem that has been run over Europe with 23 km spatial resolution. We have used a full one-way nesting approach to produce simulations centred over the city of Madrid (Spain) with 4.6 km spatial resolution, 0.92 km spatial resolution and 0.184 km spatial resolution. In last level, we have run the CMAQ (full chemistry) model to produce chemical pollution data. This is called the control reference simulation. The simplified and faster downscaling procedure used in this experiment is the CALMET-CMAQL (linear chemistry) model. Both downscaling techniques are compared using meteorological and air pollution monitoring station. The comparison between both downscaling techniques shows that the CALMET-CMAQL model is much faster and computationally cheap; the results are good enough to consider this tool for climate purposes.

Keywords: downscaling; WRF-Chem; CALMET; CMAQ; ECMWFI; Spain; urban applications; cities; Madrid; case study; Spain; weather forecasting; boundary conditions; simulation; meteorological modelling; air quality; air pollution; chemical transport modelling; linear chemistry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2015.077459

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2015 Vol.58 No.4, pp.293 - 306

Received: 02 Dec 2014
Accepted: 04 Dec 2015

Published online: 01 Jul 2016 *

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