Air Quality Forecasts

Automated, Location-Specific Forecasts

CREATE-AQI is developing an automated air-quality modeling system to provide two-day forecasts with an hourly time resolution on a 4-km horizontal grid that covers the State of Utah. These forecasts will be generated twice a day and will be designed to optimize model performance for PM2.5 and PM10, although we will also provide ozone (PM2.5 and ozone make up the EPA Air Quality Index metric). In addition to the forecasted pollutant concentrations, we will also provide forecasts for the Air Quality Index (AQI), EPA’s metric for reporting air quality. We will provide AQI forecasts of ozone and particulate pollution so the EPA AQI Activity Guides can be referenced.

Common meteorological products are unable to resolve the small-scale meteorological processes often found in areas of complex terrain, like our mountains. Using a numerical weather prediction model (WRF), we will dynamically downscale the mesoscale forecasts to a spatial resolution that can resolve meteorology in areas of complex terrain. Our air pollution emissions are based on the EPA National Emissions Inventory (NEI) and Utah-specific anthropogenic and biogenic emission estimates from the UDAQ. Our numerical models will be optimized for meteorological conditions over mountainous terrain and for the air-quality issues that are common in Utah (e.g., smoke, dust, and wintertime inversions). Our dust model is driven by meteorological output generated by our 4-km WRF model simulations and is based on recent work by Dr. Mallia and Saylor et al. This dust model is being optimized for dry lake beds, which are a major source of dust in Utah. Our forecasting work leverages computing resources from the UU’s Center of High Performance Computing (CHPC).

Forecast Videos