Assessment of natural and anthropogenic aerosol air pollution in the Middle East using MERRA-2, CAMS data assimilation products, and high-resolution WRF-Chem model simulations

Ukhov, Alexander; Mostamandi, Suleiman; da Silva, Arlindo; Flemming, Johannes; Alshehri, Yasser; Shevchenko, Illia; Stenchikov, Georgiy

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9281-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9281-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9281-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 15

Research article

|

06 Aug 2020

Research article |

| 06 Aug 2020

Assessment of natural and anthropogenic aerosol air pollution in the Middle East using MERRA-2, CAMS data assimilation products, and high-resolution WRF-Chem model simulations

Alexander Ukhov, Suleiman Mostamandi, Arlindo da Silva, Johannes Flemming, Yasser Alshehri, Illia Shevchenko, and Georgiy Stenchikov

Data sets

MERRA-2 M. G. Bosilovich, S. Akella, L. Coy, R. Cullather, C. Draper, R. Gelaro, R. Kovach, Q. Liu, A. Molod, P. Norris, K. Wargan, W. Chao, R. Reichle, L. Takacs, Y. Vikhliaev, S. Bloom, A. Collow, S. Firth, G. Labow, G. Partyka, S. Pawson, O. Reale, S. D. Schubert, M. Suarez, and Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/daac-bin/FTPSubset2.pl

CAMS global reanalysis (EAC4) A. Inness, M. Ades, A. Agustí-Panareda, J. Barré, A. Benedictow, A.-M. Blechschmidt, J. J. Dominguez, R. Engelen, H. Eskes, J. Flemming, V. Huijnen, L. Jones, Z. Kipling, S. Massart, M. Parrington, V.-H. Peuch, M. Razinger, S. Remy, M. Schulz, and M. Suttie http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/cams-nrealtime

MODIS Atmosphere L2 Aerosol Product. NASA MODIS Adaptive Processing System R. Levy and C. Hsu https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/about/purpose

MCD19A2 MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Aerosol Optical Depth Daily L2G Global 1km SIN Grid V006. 2018 A. Lyapustin, and Y. Wang https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MCD19A2.006

HTAP_v2.2: a mosaic of regional and global emission grid maps for 2008 and 2010 to study hemispheric transport of air pollution (http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/htap_v2/index.php?SECURE=123) G. Janssens-Maenhout, M. Crippa, D. Guizzardi, F. Dentener, M. Muntean, G. Pouliot, T. Keating, Q. Zhang, J. Kurokawa, R. Wankmüller, H. Denier van der Gon, J. J. P. Kuenen, Z. Klimont, G. Frost, S. Darras, B. Koffi, and M. Li https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-11411-2015

A new global anthropogenic SO2 emission inventory for the last decade: a mosaic of satellite-derived and bottom-up emissions (https://avdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/project/OMI_HTAP_emis/) F. Liu, S. Choi, C. Li, V. E. Fioletov, C. A. McLinden, J. Joiner, N. A. Krotkov, H. Bian, G. Janssens-Maenhout, A. S. Darmenov, and A. M. da Silva https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-16571-2018

Model code and software

Merra2BC. Interpolation utility for boundary and initial conditions used in WRF-Chem A. Ukhov and G. Stenchikov https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3695911

Short summary

The data assimilation products MERRA2 and CAMS are tested over the Middle East (ME) against in situ and satellite observations. For the first time, we compared the new MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval, MAIAC, with the Deep Blue and Dark Target MODIS AOD. We conducted 2-year high-resolution WRF-Chem simulations with the most accurate OMI-HTAP SO₂ emissions to estimate the contribution of natural and anthropogenic aerosols to the PM pollution in the ME.