Air Quality Issues in Vermont Rich Poirot, Air Quality and Climate Division, VT DEC

Transcription

1 Air Quality Issues in Vermont Rich Poirot, Air Quality and Climate Division, VT DEC Burlington, VT on 5/25/07 PM 2.5 = 38 ug/m 3 8-hr Ozone = ppm Slide from talk on CASAC Ozone NAAQS Review, OTC Meeting, Providence, RI, 6/6/07

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3 Average Seasonal (Daily Max 8-hour) Ozone at Selected Northeastern Sites, Note Shift from Mid-Summer to Spring, Moving from South, Urban to North, Rural

4 24 Average Exceedances/Month for Alternative 8-hour Ozone Thresholds Bennington, VT: >45 ppb Average Days/month Exceeding Ozone Threshold >50 ppb >55 ppb >60 ppb >65 ppb >70 ppb >75 ppb 0 April May June July August September

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6 Monthly Rutland, VT PM 2.5 Concentrations (1/1/2005-5/31/2014) * Monthly Mean PM 2.5 (µg/m 3 ) Annual PM 2.5 NAAQS 3 0 Jan Feb Mar April May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec * 2014 data are not yet Quality Assured, and may be somewhat higher than past due to method change.

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8 MODIS Satellite, May 31, 2010 Hourly PM 2.5 on 5/31/01 at 8AM EST

9 VT Air Quality & Climate Information Needs Better Forecast (& Hind-Cast) Capabilities for Forest Fire Impacts on PM (& Ozone) Winter Stagnation/Inversion events Summer (& Spring) Ozone events Better Sub-Daily Health Advisory Metrics, Health Messaging and Near-Real-Time Reporting for PM or Multi-Pollutant (AQHI) indices Better Scientific Policy Guidance to Assess Co-Benefits of (or Tradeoffs Between) Short & Long-term Climate Forcers, CAPs & HACs Quebec Forest Fires 7/7/02

10 VT Air Quality & Climate Information Needs, Cont. Better spatial coverage for PM, O 3, SO 2, NO 2 in un-monitored locations Remote sensing to identify sources, sinks, spatial patterns, temporal trends of: SO 2, NO X, PM, BC (& Brown Carbon ), CO 2, CH 4, Remote Sensing (or Models) for improved Accuracy & Spatial Resolution of Meteorological variables (for example Mx Ht in Complex Terrain) Better understanding of (past &) future influence of Changing Climate on timing, frequency, severity of spring/summer Ozone, & winter PM events Nitrate Stagnation Event, 3/1/2004

11 Controls on high-level ozone frequency in the Northeastern US: Preliminary results NASA AQAST 7 th Biannual Meeting June 17-19, 2014 Evan M. Oswald, Ph.D. Rich Poirot Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Ph.D.

12 Dr. Evan M. Oswald Postdoctoral Fellow with UCAR (PACE program) Climate background (U. of Michigan 2013) Vermont State Climate Office (Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux) Working with: VTDOH, VTANR Project collaborators: R. Poirot, E. Leibensperger, L-A Dupigny-Giroux, J. Merrell Study rationale: To revisit roles of meteorological controls on interannual variability Relationships with climate oscillations Estimate impacts from climate change

13 Purpose: Project details Relationships with meteorology, climate and emissions Climate oscillation work (new?) Region: Northeastern US Time period: Data source: EPA s AQS data via DataFed.net Ozone focus: high end of the ozone distribution values of high percentiles (80 th -95 th pctl) % of season over high thresholds (>=60-75ppb) Season focus: ozone monitoring season (183days)

14 Station distribution, 20-year means 83 AQS stations (removed the outlier near PA/NJ) Span geographical and physical features See some distinct regimes

15 Temporal changes:

16 Multi-scale atmospheric predictors Exploratory approach: start with many metrics Types of environmental metrics Land surface climate Temperature Dewpoint Soil moisture Solar radiation Local (4km), Regional (111km) Air flow type Segregated ozone by wind type (direction, speed, and vertical height) Statistical model predicting ozone metrics by counts of wind types Weather phenomena Stagnation events Frontal passages Teleconnection climate indices Pacific decadal oscillation, Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation Arctic Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation Quasi-Biennial Oscillation Tropical/Northern Hemisphere pattern Pollution trend metrics (NO 2 observations) Meteorological data from 2 sources: 1) PRISM obs. dataset (4km, daily) 2) N. American Regional Reanalysis (30km, daily) Teleconnection data from 1) NOAA PSD page 2) NCEP/NOAA CPC NO 2 data from EPA Airnow website (NEI 2011)

17 Multi-scale atmospheric predictors

18 Stepwise regression results: model to use with future climate projections Frequently included terms NO 2 included in most stations Regional temperature (mean, 90 th pctl) Solar radiation (regional, local) Models explain roughly half to most all variability

19 Stepwise regression results: teleconnections Models explain ~25-75% of variance Frequently included terms NO 2 included in most stations NAO JJA-mean T/NH and AMO, DJF-mean

20 The influence of emissions Annual 98 th percentile of daily max 1-hour avg. nation trend estimated on 30 sites Pollution emissions trended downward Trends vary over stations Nationwide trends in EPA network of nitrogen dioxide