ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-12-11295-2012 Uncertainties in SOA simulations due to meteorological uncertainties in Mexico City during MILAGRO-2006 field campaign Bei N. 1 3 Li G. 1 4 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 School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China Key Laboratory of Aerosol Science & Technology, SKLLQG, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, China 03 12 2012 12 23 11295 11308 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/12/11295/2012/acp-12-11295-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/11295/2012/acp-12-11295-2012.pdf

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the uncertainties in simulating secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in Mexico City metropolitan area (MCMA) due to meteorological initial uncertainties using the WRF-CHEM model through ensemble simulations. The simulated periods (24 and 29 March 2006) represent two typical meteorological episodes ("Convection-South" and "Convection-North", respectively) in the Mexico City basin during the MILAGRO-2006 field campaign. The organic aerosols are simulated using a non-traditional SOA model including the volatility basis-set modeling method and the contributions from glyoxal and methylglyoxal. Model results demonstrate that uncertainties in meteorological initial conditions have significant impacts on SOA simulations, including the peak time concentrations, the horizontal distributions, and the temporal variations. The ensemble spread of the simulated peak SOA at T0 can reach up to 4.0 μg m<sup>−3</sup> during the daytime, which is around 35% of the ensemble mean. Both the basin wide wind speed and the convergence area affect the magnitude and the location of the simulated SOA concentrations inside the Mexico City basin. The wind speed, especially during the previous midnight and the following early morning, influences the magnitude of the peak SOA concentration through ventilation. The surface horizontal convergence zone generally determines the area with high SOA concentrations. The magnitude of the ensemble spreads may vary with different meteorological episodes but the ratio of the ensemble spread to mean does not change significantly.

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