ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-10-6295-2010 Ozone predictabilities due to meteorological uncertainties in the Mexico City basin using ensemble forecasts Bei N. 1 Lei W. 1 Zavala M. 1 Molina L. T. 1 2 Molina Center for Energy and the Environment, La Jolla, California, USA Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 13 07 2010 10 13 6295 6309 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/6295/2010/acp-10-6295-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/6295/2010/acp-10-6295-2010.pdf

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the sensitivity of ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) predictions in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) to meteorological initial uncertainties and planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization schemes using state-of-the-art meteorological and photochemical prediction models through ensemble forecasts. The simulated periods (3, 9, 15 and 29 March 2006) represent four typical meteorological episodes ("South-Venting", "O<sub>3</sub>-North", "O<sub>3</sub>-South" and "Convection-North", respectively) in the Mexico City basin during the MCMA-2006/MILAGRO campaign. Our results demonstrate that the uncertainties in meteorological initial conditions have significant impacts on O<sub>3</sub> predictions, including peak time O<sub>3</sub> concentrations ([O<sub>3</sub>]), horizontal and vertical O<sub>3</sub> distributions, and temporal variations. The ensemble spread of the simulated peak [O<sub>3</sub>] averaged over the city's ambient monitoring sites can reach up to 10 ppb. The increasing uncertainties in meteorological fields during peak O<sub>3</sub> period contribute to the largest unpredictability in O<sub>3</sub> simulations, while the impacts of wind speeds and PBL height on [O<sub>3</sub>] are more straightforward and important. The magnitude of the ensemble spreads varies with different PBL schemes and meteorological episodes. The uncertainties in O<sub>3</sub> predictions caused by PBL schemes mainly come from their ability to represent the mixing layer height; but overall, these uncertainties are smaller than those from the uncertainties in meteorological initial conditions.

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