Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

00:00:00:05 – 00:00:31:29
Speaker 1
Start off. Okay, I’ll introduce Brad. Brad can correct me if I’m wrong. Today’s speaker is with. Not with Noah. Brad Pierce. Who with is with, star? I don’t know if it’s still called star. But he has worked with NASA and Noah, and he is currently located in Madison, Wisconsin, and he does work with, transport, aerosol and particulate matter transport.

00:00:32:02 – 00:00:48:16
Speaker 1
And he works with a, isotropic model to help globally to, to help to help map the global distribution and evolution of, mostly pollutants. So, Brad, if you want to take it away.

00:00:48:18 – 00:00:49:24
Speaker 2
Thanks, Scott. I’ll shut.

00:00:49:24 – 00:00:50:28
Speaker 1
Up.

00:00:51:00 – 00:01:11:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. So what I’m going to talk about today is, some research advances in real time, assimilation of of satellite, retrievals of both trace gas, primarily ozone, and then also aerosol optical depth. And how we can use these, for air quality forecasting.

00:01:11:11 – 00:01:19:13
Speaker 2
So I’m not seeing the slightest advance. Oh.

00:01:19:15 – 00:01:49:00
Speaker 2
Sorry. There we go. Okay, so a little bit of background. First, the National Weather Service air quality forecasting capability, provides operational predictions of ozone and wildfire smoke, and also airborne dust over the continental U.S.. And it does this, twice daily with 48 hour forecast. So this is, a loop that’s showing surface ozone from, the National Weather Service, forecast guidance.

00:01:49:12 – 00:02:21:19
Speaker 2
The the yellows and inter reds are high ozone mixing ratios. And you can see those coming off of, the LA basin, and extending out into the Intermountain West. Now, what with the state and regional air quality forecasters focus on is the, maximum eight hour average ozone mixing ratio at the surface, because that’s what is regulated, based on potential health impacts by the EPA.

00:02:21:21 – 00:02:46:00
Speaker 2
And so this is now just a slide that’s showing the maximum eight hour average ozone, against showing peaks, in Southern California and extending into the Intermountain West. And the current National Ambient Air quality standards set this value to be 75, less than 75 parts per billion. If you’re above that, you’re in violation of the of the air quality standards.

00:02:46:00 – 00:03:15:15
Speaker 2
And so this is the main focus of the state and local air quality forecasters for ozone. So what I’m going to talk about is what’s the potential impacts of intercontinental pollution transport. And also stratosphere troposphere exchange processes. Can be on regional air quality, air quality prediction. And what I’m going to talk about for the most part, is advances in using satellite data to constrain global predictions.

00:03:15:28 – 00:03:43:06
Speaker 2
Of, of this intercontinental transport and stress drop exchange and then some collaborative work that we’re doing with both the National Weather Service and the Noah Earth Systems Research Laboratory. In looking at coupling these global predictions to regional forecasting. So Radical stands for the real time Air Quality Modeling system was developed during my tenure at NASA. And now we’re using it to develop capabilities at NOAA.

00:03:43:20 – 00:04:14:06
Speaker 2
We’re it’s an online, global chemical and aerosol assimilation and forecasting system. And we perform, an assimilation cycle every day in a five day forecast. We do real time assimilation of stratospheric ozone profiles from the microwave live sounder, total column ozone from the ozone monitoring instrument. And then aerosol optical depth assimilation, from the, from the Morris instrument.

00:04:14:08 – 00:04:39:17
Speaker 2
We’re also using modest fire detections to have a daily updated, wildfire emissions distribution. And rack arms has been used to develop capabilities so that we can assimilate global satellite data. And we’ve also used rack ups to support, numerous airborne field missions. There’s a link at the bottom of the page that shows you where a real time kind of large scale forecasts are located.

00:04:39:27 – 00:04:59:20
Speaker 2
During 21 of the field missions that we supported was a NOAA field mission called Cal next. It was in, May and June of 19 of 2010. And it was in collaboration with the California Air Resources Board. And the focus was looking at, air quality within the LA basin and then up into the San Joaquin Valley.

00:04:59:22 – 00:05:35:14
Speaker 2
So to figure out in the lower, right, shows flight tracks from the NOAA P-3 aircraft during Cal. Next, you can see that it sampled the LA basin extensively and up into the San Joaquin Valley. And, the two panels showing bar and whisker plots are comparisons between this in situ data and our, ozone analysis. For all these flight tracks, the red is, the assimilation from maracas and the, orange or the yellow is the set of measurements on the left hand side.

00:05:35:14 – 00:06:17:10
Speaker 2
We have a prediction with no assimilation. On the right hand side, we have prediction where we had satellite, retrievals in the assimilation. And you can see that we reduced the biases and get significantly improved agreement in terms of the variance as a function of pressure compared to the interceptor data. So we can demonstrate with, with these comparisons that assimilation of global satellite data into a global forecast system can improve, the prediction of ozone, even within areas such as the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles, based on which are largely driven by, their own photochemistry.

00:06:18:07 – 00:06:41:23
Speaker 2
Another project that was done during Cal next was an inter comparison between a series of real time regional model predictions. And this was led by Steve McQueen at the Noah Earth Systems Research Laboratory. And, there’s an archive of the model evaluation and a link to that archive is shown here. So there was a number of different models.

00:06:41:23 – 00:07:07:19
Speaker 2
This shows the domains of those, various different models. Two of those models, the Nam Cmac, which was a experimental version of the National Weather Service operational Air Quality Forecast, and then also a wharf chem simulation was run with Rackham, Slatter or boundary conditions. And so we can compare and contrast what the impact is with and without rack lateral boundary conditions.

00:07:07:22 – 00:07:37:02
Speaker 2
So this slide shows a comparison between the the Max with Rackham Slatter boundary conditions and observations from ozone. Sun at Joshua Tree, which is just to the east of the LA basin. The models on the top and the observations on the bottom. It’s shown as a function of altitude. For the next time during the mission and what you can see, high ozone, higher red and lower ozone are is yellow.

00:07:37:02 – 00:08:03:10
Speaker 2
And what you can see is that the model captures in general the variation of ozone, at Joshua Tree, but it has a significantly, weaker gradient, at the tropopause start around ten or so kilometers or the ozone gradient is very sharp. And the observations, this, inability to resolve the sharp ozone gradient leads to overestimates and free tropospheric cones on a Joshua tree.

00:08:03:10 – 00:08:37:16
Speaker 2
So basically more green, between for six kilometers than than yellows, as in the observations. So the consequence of this is that within the Nam Cmac model, when we use our, lateral boundary conditions, we tend to overestimate, surface ozone. So this is a comparison now between the surface observations, which are used, by the regulatory agencies to monitor air quality and the predictions with and without Rothko’s latter apparent condition.

00:08:37:18 – 00:09:05:11
Speaker 2
And what’s shown here is the ratio of the model to the observation points for the max eight hour average. And we’re looking for ratios that are, purple and green. And what you can see is that particularly along the California Nevada border, when we add recommend or mountain conditions, we tend to overestimate this max eight hour average. And again, this is a consequence of increased free tropospheric ozone.

00:09:05:22 – 00:09:32:25
Speaker 2
That is the result of the inability to resolve the sharp gradient at the tropopause. So we’ve conducted retrospective, simulations with a much higher resolution dwarf cam model, regional prediction model, which is an online canonical transport model like Rackham. And this is a little, beginning towards the end of May, that’s showing surface ozone predicted by the model.

00:09:33:07 – 00:09:57:16
Speaker 2
The circles are the observed surface ozone from the EPA air now sites. And the white contours are the 500 millibar jet potential heights. And you can see that during this period, there’s a, trough that’s impinging on, the coast of California. And then we have diurnal, reductions in ozone in most of the urban areas.

00:09:57:16 – 00:10:24:05
Speaker 2
This is titration of ozone in urban areas. And then we have episodic transport of high ozone out from the urban areas into the Intermountain West. Kind of similar to what’s happening, in the current. Now, I’ve seen that forecast cycle. What you’ll also see is that there’s periods where there’s general enhancements, kind of regional enhancement of ozone, in the Intermountain West.

00:10:24:05 – 00:10:51:27
Speaker 2
And this is associated with, longer range transport associated with this trough coming onshore. What you do see is that the worst kept simulation on the right hand side shows comparisons with ozone. And you can see that the worst kind of simulation is able to resolve the sharp gradient and ozone at the tropopause, leading to biased that are less than 10%, throughout the column.

00:10:51:29 – 00:11:16:08
Speaker 2
So, what I’d like to do now is, is look at, our current predictions. Not quite the forecast for today because I had to put this time together yesterday. But, we’ll look at the forecast cycle from yesterday. So this is a modest true color image for April 14th. Just to give you some, depiction of what the synoptic system is.

00:11:16:08 – 00:11:54:05
Speaker 2
And you can see that in the northern hemisphere off the coast of Asia, there’s a number of different, cyclonic systems moving across the North Pacific. This next slide now shows carbon monoxide retrievals from the Airs instrument. And we’re looking at total column carbon monoxide, which is a very good tracer for, for pollution. And what you can see, hopefully I can toggle back between these two is that within that cloud shield moving off of, Southeast Asia, we’ve got enhanced such and total column carbon monoxide.

00:11:54:08 – 00:12:25:11
Speaker 2
And those are being affected across, within the storm tracks. And you can see, enhanced carbon monoxide coming onshore over the western coast of the continental U.S.. So, the next slide is our current forecast cycle from Rackham. We’re looking at our prediction of carbon monoxide. Hopefully this movie is playing, fairly well. We’re looking at, predictions of carbon monoxide on the 310 K isotropic surface.

00:12:25:14 – 00:12:53:01
Speaker 2
And we’ve just chosen to look at the transport down on this isotropic surface because it allows us to see the, the rivers of pollution as they’re being attracted, within the synoptic scale. Systems across the Pacific, the bold, blue lines are where this ice drop intersects the tropopause and the white, fault lines are where this ice control intersects the surface.

00:12:53:01 – 00:13:19:07
Speaker 2
And you can see that we’re intersecting the surface over Mexico and into the south, western U.S.. And that’s where we’ve got transport of high carbon monoxide again, which is a tracer for pollution, being interacted across, within the warm sector of these, cyclonic disturbances and then impinging on the western U.S., where it, descends down towards the surface.

00:13:19:09 – 00:13:52:20
Speaker 2
The next slide is showing, ozone mixing ratio on this same isotropic surface. And here we can see the influence of stratospheric troposphere exchange processes, where again, now we have high ozone, within the stratosphere. And during this, the center concentrations, these synoptic systems moving across the Pacific, you can see that this high ozone is getting sheared off and it’s being affected down into the lower troposphere, where, again, it can interact with the surface and contribute to enhanced surface ozone.

00:13:52:29 – 00:14:29:04
Speaker 2
In particular, you can see a large, trough of high ozone coming across kind of the Intermountain West during the forecast cycle. So what we’ve been doing, with that Noah Earth Systems Research Laboratory, is working with George and Steve Peckham to, conduct real time regional forecasts where we use rack AMS lateral routing conditions for, updating, a 13 kilometer rapid refresh, prediction that includes, aerosols and, and ozone.

00:14:29:06 – 00:14:55:07
Speaker 2
And this has been used to predict pollution over the continental U.S. twice daily. And this is just a section of, the this evening. 500 millibar ozone is parts per billion by volume, along with the rapid fiber and burning millibar heights. You can see high ozone coming in across the Pacific at 500 millibars and going into the Baja California region.

00:14:55:09 – 00:15:24:10
Speaker 2
This next slide now is showing, an animation of that 500 Millibar ozone forecast. Initializes ozone yesterday and goes out to zero of this evening. And again, you can see transport, from across the Pacific entering, the Southern California air and being affected over Baja California. This final animation now shows the surface ozone predicted from, wrap cast.

00:15:24:12 – 00:16:01:26
Speaker 2
And again, you can see, a strong diurnal cycle because of the local photochemical production. But you can see ozone, an air assets over Southern California, that are consistent with the operational Nam cmap forecast. But in this case, we’ve got the additional contribution from, intercontinental transport of of elevated ozone. So to conclude, intercontinental pollution transport and stratosphere troposphere sphere exchange processes can contribute to increased surface ozone and potentially lead to violation of the ozone standard.

00:16:01:26 – 00:16:42:19
Speaker 2
So they become very relevant for state and local air quality forecasting. Guidance. The EPA is proposing to strengthen the current eight hour ozone standard and reduce it to somewhere between 60 and 70 parts per billion, instead of the current 75 parts science. And this is going to lead to, more violations, particularly over the western U.S. because of the high topography, and then finally assimilation of trace gas and as our travels within a global, air assimilation and forecasting system, could involve provide improved constraints on the impacts of these intercontinental pollution, transport and structural exchange processes.

00:16:43:20 – 00:16:50:16
Speaker 2
The the operational regional air quality predictions. And I’ll close there and take any questions.

00:16:50:19 – 00:17:18:08
Speaker 1
Thanks, Brett. And I’m going to start with a question because I thought of one, when you see that enhanced ozone at 500 millibars coming over Baja, it’s that mostly like I’ll call it a dynamic thing that’s dealing with a lower tropopause. Or is it, pollution that’s been transported across the ocean, or is it a mix? And how do you if it’s a mix, how do you tell, you know, which is which?

00:17:18:08 – 00:17:26:14
Speaker 1
I like that you can use it because you can infer some dynamics from it. But if it’s also pollution, I’ve just kind of confused how to interpret that.

00:17:26:21 – 00:17:56:26
Speaker 2
Yeah. So you’re right. It’s a combination of both dynamics. Just transport of high ozone from the stratosphere and, pollution. So actual generation of ozone, because we’ve got pollution being affected across the Pacific. I think for the the forecast cycle that I’m looking at here, most of that enhanced ozone coming over Southern California, I would say that that’s associated with intercontinental pollution transport.

00:17:56:26 – 00:18:21:01
Speaker 2
And the reason I do that, we go back to the, if we go back to the the CO2 tracer, which is again a good indicator of pollution transport, you can see that that high ozone is associated with elevated carbon monoxide, and it’s not associated with the very low carbon monoxide that you see in the stratosphere, in other cases.

00:18:21:03 – 00:18:57:13
Speaker 2
So you can see there that ozone mixing ratios from our model at 310 K are up around 70 to 80 parts per billion off of Baja California. And those are associated with elevated carbon monoxide. Whereas that fall that’s coming across the central U.S during the forecast cycle, is associated with high ozone and low carbon monoxide and so you can use these, these different dynamical and, chemical tracers to distinguish between purely dynamics and, ozone production from pollution.

00:18:57:16 – 00:19:21:06
Speaker 1
Okay. But I guess I have one other question. Then I’ll let other people jump in since Great Falls is on the line. I’m guessing a lot of their pollution, especially in the summer, would be from local fires. And I’m wondering how well this model does. And picking up, either the ozone or the seal that’s produced by that and moving that around.

00:19:21:06 – 00:19:37:00
Speaker 1
I mean, you’re using the Motus and the Earth observations to start the model, I guess, or to assimilate is that’s all assimilated in the model. So I’m assuming it does a fairly good job of doing that. But I mean, we’re looking at something right now that doesn’t have fires. And it’s I just want to know if you can comment on that.

00:19:37:07 – 00:20:09:03
Speaker 2
So actually during this forecast cycle, most of the fires that are in the global and regional simulation are fires over Baja California. And if you’re looking at that three can ten K carbon monoxide, you can see plumes of carbon monoxide coming off of being attracted to the south west off of Baja. That is from fires. But I would say that for specific localities, Montana, you would want to be looking at the, the rap.

00:20:09:28 – 00:20:36:05
Speaker 2
Predictions which also include fire emission. And those are at much higher resolution and are are likely to be resolving, the fire plumes that are going to be impacting a particular, region much better than our global analysis. And that’s why we want a couple. We want a couple of both. The global prediction to get this intercontinental transport and the regional predictions to get higher resolution depictions of the fire.

00:20:36:05 – 00:20:55:19
Speaker 2
So there’s a link at the the rapid refresh page. There is a link to the, the rap chem forecast, and that includes aerosols and and ozone, carbon monoxide, associated with fires that would give good guidance to specific localities.

00:20:55:26 – 00:20:58:18
Speaker 1
So that’s the rapid refresh.noaa.gov.

00:20:58:21 – 00:21:00:22
Speaker 2
That’s the main page. But then it but there’s.

00:21:00:22 – 00:21:02:03
Speaker 1
I see the link there on the left.

00:21:02:03 – 00:21:27:29
Speaker 2
Of link at the bottom. If you go to there, there’s twice daily forecasts that are initialized and at various different animations. So McCain and George Grill are the leaders of that effort. And if, if a particular, forecast office would be interested in seeing different products or different levels, then I would contact them and they can add those to the, to the web page.

00:21:28:01 – 00:21:32:06
Speaker 2
Thanks.

00:21:33:19 – 00:21:40:00
Speaker 3
This is a great fall. So any questions? This is Ed. So, guys, I had a couple of questions to.

00:21:40:03 – 00:21:53:05
Speaker 2
No, not at the present. I just, we recently had, Western Region show presentation on this model, and so I just thought I’d, hop on and see what.

00:21:53:05 – 00:21:55:09
Speaker 1
Was presented today. Okay.

00:21:55:12 – 00:22:06:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. And this is kind of just, this is a, an extension of that, with an up to date forecast. So it’s very similar to what was presented last week.

00:22:06:10 – 00:22:10:16
Speaker 3
See, bread. It’s the global models, the FIM. Right.

00:22:10:26 – 00:22:50:05
Speaker 2
Actually the global model is rack of. So that is the finite element model. That’s being developed at Israel. Stan Benjamin’s group is leading that. And so it’s a different model, but it’s, it’s got some of the, some similar characteristic like the film, as you know, as, it’s it’s like the old, rock model with, isotropic, vertical coordinates, but it’s using, more sophisticated, horizontal grid, but, but so FEM with cam is very similar to rack.

00:22:50:10 – 00:22:56:25
Speaker 2
So we work with Jerk Grill and Stan Benjamin on some of the film development for chemistry.

00:22:56:25 – 00:23:00:23
Speaker 3
Okay. So I guess I was wondering, so what is the what is the resolution of the global model?

00:23:00:25 – 00:23:01:18
Speaker 1
This is this is.

00:23:01:18 – 00:23:02:24
Speaker 2
Run at one degree.

00:23:02:27 – 00:23:07:28
Speaker 3
Okay. At end of the wrap model, up to 48 hours twice a day. You said.

00:23:08:05 – 00:23:08:28
Speaker 2
That’s right.

00:23:09:01 – 00:23:11:27
Speaker 3
And does it also do particulate matter. Right.

00:23:12:00 – 00:23:38:19
Speaker 2
It does does particulate matter. And there’s another there’s another link. There’s another forecast that Stan Benjamin script is doing which is actually with the her. Right. So it’s a three kilometer resolution prediction and it doesn’t have full chemistry, but it does have aerosols. And I can provide, Scott with a link to that forecast, but that right now is just over the western U.S..

00:23:38:21 – 00:23:48:17
Speaker 2
Okay. That’s that’s a very computationally expensive, forecast to put out, but that’s a three kilometer, her forecast with aerosols.

00:23:48:19 – 00:23:57:10
Speaker 3
But so if, if, if Great Falls was interested in a smoke forecast, it would. Yes, there would be one from the wrap from this.

00:23:57:12 – 00:24:06:03
Speaker 2
There would be one from the wrap. And there’s also the, the operational, smoke forecast that is based on high split trajectory.

00:24:06:03 – 00:24:07:20
Speaker 1
Right, right. But but.

00:24:07:20 – 00:24:27:21
Speaker 2
These the, the, the wrap chem would be for chemistry with relatively sophisticated aerosol treatment and the her with aerosols would also be, a more detailed depiction of the aerosols for smoke.

00:24:27:23 – 00:24:41:04
Speaker 1
Thanks. Dan, if you want to give me control, I can just go through the, I’m on the rapid refresh page, and I can kind of step through how to get to the plots. So.

00:24:41:13 – 00:25:04:03
Speaker 1
Okay. Can people see my screen? Yes. So this is at the Rapid Refresh? No. Okay. And you’ll see there’s this rapid refresh cam plots. Link. And if you click on it, I clicked on that first I that well, there’s nothing on this. It’s all text. But if you scroll down you can see, you know, show products kind.

00:25:04:03 – 00:25:25:07
Speaker 1
It’s at times full domain at times. And if you click on the show products, you have all of these different things that are coming out of the, rapid refresh with, you know, the different products. They can have ozone aloft, ozone at the surface. We have the particulate matter, I guess eight meters, I call I call that the surface.

00:25:25:18 – 00:25:47:25
Speaker 1
So if you then click on it, opens up a new web page and you see, similar, similar mapping that Brad had shown earlier today. So, you know, go to the Rapid refresh, don’t know what I’ve got and click through and you can find some I think pretty nice forecast imagery. For the next 18 hours.

00:25:47:28 – 00:26:05:00
Speaker 3
Actually out to 48 hours. Right. Is that true. Oh yeah. Yeah. That that’s the kind of special thing. And I notice this preset there too is kind of a these are fields you wouldn’t normally because it is you. Right. Operationally it only goes to 18 hours there.

00:26:05:01 – 00:26:16:14
Speaker 1
Just so 17 there. And I thought was every hour. But no, it’s every three hours. Right. Okay. So just another resource for forecast offices.

00:26:16:16 – 00:26:45:11
Speaker 2
So the other, the other, agency that’s doing a lot of smoke forecasting is the National Forest Service. And they’ve got a program where, again, it’s kind of a trajectory based log prediction, but it’s using very high resolution. Wharf RW simulations to drive those trajectories. And that’s the blue sky framework. Have you heard about that at all?

00:26:45:13 – 00:26:46:19
Speaker 1
I have not, but okay.

00:26:46:21 – 00:27:01:11
Speaker 2
But that’s another that’s another. Local forecast system that that’s focusing on fires in the Western Europe.

00:27:01:14 – 00:27:04:21
Speaker 1
Okay. So no other comments. Thanks, Brad.

00:27:04:24 – 00:27:05:19
Speaker 2
Okay. Thank you.