Adjoint sensitivities reveal relative contributions of emissions to specific concentrations or metrics (image - Google Earth)

Aim:

Provide estimates of ozone benefits to human health & ecosystems for potential technological paths to emissions reductions which could achieve regulatory endpoints.

Tools:

CMAQ adjoint driven by metrics that evaluate the harm to human health and the environment due to ozone exposure incurred in the US during the summer of 2012.

Human Health

Chronic exposure to ozone, often in cities, increases the risk of death from respiratory illness (Jerrett et al., 2009).

Crops & Timber

Reduced yields of common crops and many trees result from exposure to high ozone levels over the growing season.

Ecosystems

Vegetation that serves varied animal populations in parks can be harmed by ozone, affecting interdependent systems.

Change in 8-hr average ozone concentration with elimination of solvent-related VOC emissions.

Previous Work

We quantified the downwind effects of substituting slowly reacting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in paints and solvents in the Northeastern corridor by evaluating various emissions scenarios with the CMAQ model (Capps et al. 2010).

Exchanging highly reactive VOCs for more slowly reacting ones based on a certain chemical scale reduced the ozone regulatory metric locally, without notable downwind increases.