View article

The complex configuration of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula (NEIP) provokes a complex behavior of photochemical pollutants, which demands a high spatial resolution when applying an air quality model. CMAQ has been used for air quality assessment in the NEIP coupled with the MM5 meteorological model and EMICAT2000 emission model, and has been extensively evaluated against available ambient data during a typical summertime photochemical pollution episode. Simulations with different resolutions were evaluated to select the needed grid resolution. Meteorological inputs are sensitive to the degree of topographical smoothing. Fine-resolution simulations present the best scores during the development of the sea breeze. The performance of statistical parameters for ground-level O₃ greatly improves when decreasing the horizontal and vertical grid spacing. Statistical parameters indicate that …