ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-12-10387-2012 Impact of urban parameterization on high resolution air quality forecast with the GEM – AQ model Struzewska J. 1 Kaminski J. W. 2 3 4 Department of Environmental Engineering Systems, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland WxPrime Corporation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada EcoForecast Foundation, Warsaw, Poland 07 11 2012 12 21 10387 10404 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/12/10387/2012/acp-12-10387-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/10387/2012/acp-12-10387-2012.pdf

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of urban cover on high-resolution air quality forecast simulations with the GEM-AQ (Global Environmental Multiscale and Air Quality) model. The impact of urban area on the ambient atmosphere is non-stationary, and short-term variability of meteorological conditions may result in significant changes of the observed intensity of urban heat island and pollutant concentrations. In this study we used the Town Energy Balance (TEB) parameterization to represent urban effects on modelled meteorological and air quality parameters at the final nesting level with horizontal resolution of ~5 km over Southern Poland. Three one-day cases representing different meteorological conditions were selected and the model was run with and without the TEB parameterization. Three urban cover categories were used in the TEB parameterization: mid-high buildings, very low buildings and low density suburbs. Urban cover layers were constructed based on an area fraction of towns in a grid cell. To analyze the impact of urban parameterization on modelled meteorological and air quality parameters, anomalies in the lowest model layer for the air temperature, wind speed and pollutant concentrations were calculated. Anomalies of the specific humidity fields indicate that the use of the TEB parameterization leads to a systematic reduction of moisture content in the air. Comparison with temperature and wind speed measurements taken at urban background monitoring stations shows that application of urban parameterization improves model results. For primary pollutants the impact of urban areas is most significant in regions characterized with high emissions. In most cases the anomalies of NO<sub>2</sub> and CO concentrations were negative. This reduction is most likely caused by an enhanced vertical mixing due to elevated surface temperature and modified vertical stability.

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