An examination of the CMAQ simulations of the wet deposition of ammonium from a Bayesian perspective

The ability of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to simulate the wet deposition of ammonium during 8-week winter and summer periods in 2001 is evaluated using observations from the National Acid Deposition Program (NADP) monitoring sites. The objective of this study is to ascertain the effects of precipitation simulations and emissions on CMAQ simulations of deposition. In both seasons, CMAQ tends to underpredict the deposition amounts. Based on the co-located measurements of ammonium wet deposition and precipitation at the NADP sites and on estimated precipitation amounts for each grid cell, Bayesian statistical methods are used to estimate ammonium wet deposition over all grid cells in the study region. To assess the effect of precipitation on the CMAQ simulations, our statistical method is run twice for each time period, using the simulated precipitation information provided to CMAQ and precipitation estimates based on data collected by the cooperative observer network. During the winter period when stratiform-type precipitation dominates, precipitation amounts do not seem to be a major factor in CMAQ’s ability to simulate the wet deposition of ammonium. However, during the summer period when precipitation is mainly generated by convective processes, small portions of the region are identified in which problems with precipitation simulations may be adversely affecting CMAQ’s estimates. Published by Elsevier Ltd.