Updates to the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) Modeling System and Integration with Models-3

The Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) modeling system has been integrated with the Environmental Protection Agency's Models-3 air quality modeling system. This paper provides an overview of the emission processing capabilities of the revised SMOKE system (version 1.0), and describes how they can benefit the air quality modeling community. Like the SMOKE prototype, SMOKE version 1.0 processes area-source, biogenic, mobile-source, and point-source emissions data to create gridded, hourly emission files for air quality models. It also permits faster emission processing (in minutes rather than days or longer) and requires less disk space than comparable emission processors. SMOKE version 1.0 is specifically designed for support of emission processing with user-selected chemical mechanisms and for assessing reactivity-based controls, such as reformulating an industrial process to use a volatile organic compound that has less ozone-forming potential. A number of additional benefits arise from these enhancements and from integration with Models-3: (1) the ability to process any pollutant (criteria, hazardous, etc.) for area and point sources, and to some degree for mobile sources; (2) the ability to output emissions for any model species for which the user can define speciation profiles; (3) multiple-country processing; (4) the ability to input more inventory formats; (4) direct communication with Models-3 to retrieve grid descriptions, episode information, and chemical mechanism details; (5) support of the Models-3 plume-in-grid preprocessor; and (6) a Models-3 user interface for SMOKE input file preparation.