Il-Soo Park

Simulating Urban-Scale Air Pollutants and Their Predicting Capabilities over the Seoul Metropolitan Area

Abstract Urban-scale air pollutants for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter >10 μm, and ozone (O3) were simulated over the Seoul metropolitan area, Korea, during the period of July 2-11, 2002, and their predicting capabilities were discussed. The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) and the highly disaggregated anthropogenic and the biogenic gridded emissions (1 km × 1 km) recently prepared by the Korean Ministry of Environment were applied. Wind fields with observational nudging in the prognostic meteorological model TAPM are optionally adopted to comparatively examine the meteorological impact on the prediction capabilities of urban-scale air pollutants. The result shows that the simulated concentrations of secondary air pollutant largely agree with observed levels with an index of agreement (IOA) of >0.6, whereas IOAs of ∼0.4 are found for most primary pollutants in the major cities, reflecting the quality of emission data in the urban area. The observationally nudged wind fields with higher IOAs have little effect on the prediction for both primary and secondary air pollutants, implying that the detailed wind field does not consistently improve the urban air pollution model performance if emissions are not well specified. However, the robust highest concentrations are better described toward observations by imposing observational nudging, suggesting the importance of wind fields for the predictions of extreme concentrations such as robust highest concentrations, maximum levels, and >90th percentiles of concentrations for both primary and secondary urban-scale air pollutants.

Analysis of Variation Characteristics of Greenhouse Gases in the Background Atmosphere Measured at Gosan, Jeju

Increase of the greenhouse gases emissions during last century has led remarkable changes in our environment and climate system. Continuous monitoring of atmospheric constituents over the world is positively necessary to understand these changes around us. The concentrations of greenhouse gases () have been continuously measured at Global Climate Change Monitoring station in Gosan, Jeju since January, 2002. In this study, the variation characteristics of greenhouse gases as well as their annual, seasonal and diurnal trend using the data from January, 2002 to December, 2005 were analyzed. The raw data which was used in the analysis were validated with the methods recommended by WDCGG (World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases). The concentration of was increasing continuously by 2.1 ppm/year, while did not show any increasing or decreasing trend clearly for 4 years. The concentration of was slightly increasing and CFCs were decreasing except CFC-12 which has longer lifetime compared with other CFCs. The variations of the greenhouse gases at Gosan were shown to be consistent with the global trend. But the concentration level of in Korea was more or less higher than abroad.