Enhanced representation of soil NO emissions in the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model | CU Experts

Abstract. Modeling of soil nitric oxide (NO) emissions is highly uncertain and may misrepresent its spatial and temporal distribution. This study builds upon a recently introduced parameterization to improve the timing and spatial distribution of soil NO emission estimates in the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The parameterization considers soil parameters, meteorology, land use, and mineral nitrogen (N) availability to estimate NO emissions. We incorporate daily year-specific fertilizer data from the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) agricultural model to replace the annual generic data of the initial parameterization, and use a 12 km resolution soil biome map over the continental US. CMAQ modeling for July 2011 shows slight differences in model performance in simulating fine particulate matter and ozone from IMPROVE and CASTNET sites and NO2 columns from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite retrievals. We also simulate how the change in soil NO emissions scheme affects the expected O3 response to projected emissions reductions.;

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