Evaluation of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 4.5: Sensitivities impacting model performance: Part I—Ozone

This study examines ozone (O3) predictions from the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model version 4.5 and discusses potential factors influencing the model results. Daily maximum 8-h average O3 levels are largely underpredicted when observed O3 levels are above 85 ppb and overpredicted when they are below 35 ppb. Using a clustering approach, model performance was examined separately for several different synoptic regimes. Under the most common synoptic conditions of a typical summertime Bermuda High setup, the model showed good overall performance for O3, while associations have been identified here between other, less frequent, synoptic regimes and the O3 overprediction and underprediction biases. A sensitivity test between the CB-IV and CB05 chemical mechanisms showed that predictions of daily maximum 8-h average O3 using CB05 were on average 7.3% higher than those using CB-IV. Boundary condition (BC) sensitivity tests show that the overprediction biases at low O3 levels are more sensitive to the BC O3 levels near the surface than BC concentrations aloft. These sensitivity tests also show the model performance for O3 improved when using the global GEOS-CHEM BCs instead of default profiles. Simulations using the newest version of the CMAQ model (v4.6) showed a small improvement in O3 predictions, particularly when vertical layers were not collapsed. Collectively, the results suggest that key synoptic weather patterns play a leading role in the prediction biases, and more detailed study of these episodes are needed to identify further modeling improvements.