The NASA Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (AQAST)

Daniel J. Jacob, Harvard UniversityAQAST Leader

http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/aqast

Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (AQAST)organized in 2011 by the NASA Applied Sciences Program

EARTH SCIENCE SERVING AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT NEEDS

satellites

suborbital platforms

models

AQAST

Air Quality Management • Pollution monitoring• Exposure assessment• AQ forecasting• Source attribution of events• Quantifying emissions• Natural&foreign influences• AQ processes• Climate-AQ interactions

AQAST

Earth observing system

AQAST members span a range of expertise

• satellite data retrieval and interpretation• aircraft and ground-based measurements• atmospheric modeling• emission inventories

See AQAST membersweb page

AQAST organization

• AQAST members are appointed for five years

• They carry out Investigator Projects (IPs) with core funding, and Tiger Team Projects (TTPs) with supplementary funding competed on annual basis to address urgent air quality management needs.

• All AQAST projects involve partnerships with air quality managers and have deliverable air quality management outcomes

• AQAST has flexibility in how it allocates its resources Members are encouraged to adjust their IPs to evolving air quality needsThe team is self-organizing and can respond quickly to demands

Scope of current AQAST projects (IPs and TTPs)

Partner agency

• Local: RAQC, BAAQD• State: TCEQ, MDE, Wisconsin DNR, CARB, Iowa DNR, GAEPD, GFC• Regional: LADCO, EPA Region 8 • National: EPA, NOAA, NPS

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Earth Science resource

Satellites: MODIS, MISR, MOPITT, AIRS, OMI, TES, GOES, GOME-2

Suborbital: ARCTAS, DISCOVER-AQ, ozonesondes, PANDORA

Models: MOZART, CAM, AM-3, GEOS-Chem, RAQMS, STEM, GISS, IPCC

Uncontrolled landfill liner fire within 5 miles of >150K people

• 7.5 acres burned, May-June 2012

• 1.3 million shredded tires

• Irritants + mutagens + SO2 + 5-80 µg/m3 PM2.5

AQAST Nowcasting tool helped policymakers decide public health response & favorable conditions for fire intervention

• WRF-Chem + GSI 3DVAR 72hr forecast assimilating MODIS data.

+ AERMOD @ 100 m

+ emissions factors from mobile monitoring by 3 groups

= New decision support toolkit for rapid public health response to urban toxic releases

AQAST decision support for the Iowa Landfill Fire of 2012

AQAST PIs: Carmichael, Spak

AQAST estimates of US background ozone for EPA revision of NAAQS

4TH highest NA background ozone (GEOS-Chem)

Annual maximum stratospheric influence (AM-3)

Background forecasting using AIRS CO over Pacific

Zhang et al. [2011], Lin et al. [2012ab]

• Peer-reviewed global model statistics for US, North American, and natural background ozone from AQAST form the basis for the EPA Integrated Science Assessment (ISA) and Risk and Exposure Assessment (REA) in the current NAAQS revision

• Estimates from two independent models (GEOS-Chem and AM-3) provide a first error characterization on background estimates

• Satellite observations are used for background forecasting, model evaluation

AQAST PIs: Fiore, Jacob

AQAST Products

• GLIMPSE (Henze): fast screening tool for radiative forcing implications of AQ management strategies

• Operational AQ ensemble forecasts for Maryland (Thompson)

• WHIPS (Holloway): user-friendly processing of satellite data

1. Easily obtain useful data in familiar formats

Custom OMI NO2 “Level 3” products on any grid in netCDF with WHIPS (Holloway)

Annual NO2 shapefiles - OMI & CMAQ on CMAQ grids (AQAST Tiger Team)

Google Earth

2. Find easy-to-use guidance & example scripts for understanding OMI products and comparing to simulated troposphere & PBL concentrations

One-stop user portal (Holloway & AQAST Tiger Team)

OMI NO2 & SO2 guidance, field campaign example case studies (Spak & AQAST Tiger Team)

3. Obtain OMI observational operators for assimilation & emissions inversion in CMAQ

•NO2 in GEOS-Chem CMAQ (Henze, Pye)

•SO2 in STEM CMAQ (Spak, Kim)

•O3 in STEM CMAQ (Huang, Carmichael, Kim)

AQAST progress toward an OMI AQ management toolkit:AQ managers can now…

OMI NO2 KML in SARP flight planning

AQAST PIs: Carmichael, Spak

AQAST meetings and outreach

• Twice-yearly AQAST meetings with air quality managers• NCAR (May 2011), EPA (Nov 2011),

U. Wisconsin (Jun 2012), CARB (Nov 2012)

• AQAST workshops and training sessions• AQAST Physical Atmosphere Meeting, ARSET training

workshops

• AQAST representation at AQ meetings, seminars/webinars • NACAA, WESTAR, CenSARA, CMAS, Connecticut DEEP

• Saint Louis ozone garden

• AQAST special session and Town Hall at Fall 2012 AGU• Oral sessions Monday all day, poster Tuesday am• AQAST Town Hall Tuesday 12:30

• Newsletter (subscribe from web site)

AQAST website (screenshot)

TEMPO geostationary satellite instrumentselected in November 2012 for pre-2020 launch

PI: Kelly Chance, Harvard-Smithsonian

• Monitoring of ozone, aerosols, NO2, SO2, formaldehyde, glyoxal with 1-hour temporal resolution, 2-km spatial resoution

• Multispectral observations to provide information on lower tropospheric ozone

• To be part of a geostationary constellation with NOAA GOES-R, other sensors observing Europe and East Asia