Identification

Title

Air quality forecasting for winter-time PM2.5 episodes occurring in multiple cities in central and southern Chile

Abstract

Episodic air quality degradation due to particles occurs in multiple cities in central and southern Chile during the austral winter reaching levels up to 300-800 µg/m3 hourly PM2.5, which can be associated with severe effects on human health. An air quality prediction system is developed to predict such events in near real time up to 3 days in advance for nine cities with regular air quality monitoring: Santiago, Rancagua, Curicó, Talca, Chillan, Los Ángeles, Temuco, Valdivia, and Osorno. The system uses the Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry model configured with a nested 2 km grid-spacing domain to predict weather and inert tracers. The tracers are converted to hourly PM2.5 concentrations using an observationally based calibration which is substantially less computationally intensive than a full chemistry model. The conversion takes into account processes occurring in these cities, including higher likelihood of episode occurrence during weekends and during colder days, the latter related to increased wood-burning-stove activity for heating. The system is calibrated and evaluated for April-August 2014 where it has an overall skill of 53-72% of episodes accurately forecasted (61-76% for the best initialization) which is better than persistence for most stations. Forecasts one, two, and three days in advance all have skill in forecasting events but often present large variability within them due to different meteorological initializations. The system is being implemented in Chile to assist authority decisions not only to warn the population but also to take contingency-based emission restrictions to try to avoid severe pollution events.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ww7k6j

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact