Numerical Simulation of Biomass Burning Aerosol Transport for Northern Thailand

Abstract

We simulated a numerical of biomass burning aerosol transport for the year 2014 and 2015 in northern Thailand using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF/Chem). The global gridded analyses from the NCEP FNL (Final), the global emission data from the REanalysis of the TROpospheric chemical composition over the past 40 years (RETRO) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and the daily biomass burning emission data from 3BEM were used in this study. The simulated daily averaged particulate matters with diameters less than 10 micron (PM10) at 5-km resolution covering the 3-month period of February-April of the year 2014 and 2015 were evaluated using measurements from 13 ground stations distributed in northern Thailand. Results show PM10 concentrations from the end of February to the middle of March at most stations are relatively high and exceed the value of 50 μg/m3, which is a threshold for polluted air quality according to the World Health Organization (WHO). We can also see that the numerical biomass burning acrosol transport simulation system can predict the times when daily averaged PM10 dry mass concentrations are high and low well for both hourly and daily comparison. The results indicated that daily simulated performed better than hourly simulated compared to ground-based measurement. The overall correlation coefficients between the daily simulations and observations for the year 2014 and 2015 are 0.7469 and 0.7751, respectively.