Initial Modeling of the August 2000 Houston-Galveston Ozone Episode
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Date
2001-12-09
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Abstract
This report describes MM5 modeling work to date at Texas A&M University, sponsored
by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, with the goal of an accurate,
fully validated meteorological simulation delivered by February 28, 2002. Specifically,
this report describes the meteorological conditions during the August 25-September 1,
2000, Houston-Galveston ozone episode, describes the modeling philosophy being
followed to develop high-quality meteorological fields, describes the MM5 modeling
system itself, and describes the results of various experiments conducted over the past
few months.
Results so far indicate that, with suitable modification to land surface and/or radiative
forcing, the MM5 is fully capable of simulating the temperatures and vertical extent of
the daytime boundary layer. Low-level nighttime temperatures are too warm, which may
lead to overly robust turbulent mixing at night. The present nesting scheme produces
very good quality large-scale winds and realistic sea breeze evolution.
Future work will focus on determining the accuracy of the model-simulated nighttime
wind cycle, and, if necessary, investigating ways of improving the nighttime winds.
Differences in behavior of various PBL schemes will be further investigated and
evaluated. Wind profiler and Doppler lidar data will be assimilated on a coarse scale, and
statistical measures of model accuracy will be used to provide objective measures of
model performance.
Of all model runs that have been conducted so far, the best performance has been
exhibited by the dec6grid4 run, with the MRF planetary boundary layer scheme and an
extra sigma layer near the ground.
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Nielsen-Gammon, J. W., 2001: Initial Modeling of the August 2000 Houston-Galveston Ozone Episode. TNRCC Report, 71 pp.