URBAG participation in the European WRF-Chem Workshop 2023

Between May 9th and 11th, 2023, the European WRF-Chem Workshop has taken place in the Italian city of Lecce, in which the URBAG group participated. The URBAG researcher Alba Badia  shared her work related to the atmospheric and chemical transport model Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry to the workshop participants. The workshop was intended to discuss regional air quality applications of the WRF-Chem model. There were around 20 on-site and 15 online presentations grouped into 5 topics: 1) Trace gases (formation, chemical mechanisms), 2) physical parameterization, 3) improving WRF-Chem emission database, 4) Air pollution, 5) greenhouse gases and 6) natural aerosols (dust, sea-salt and volcanic ash).

Alba Badia gave a talk on “Modelling the impacts of green infrastructure on air quality”, in which she discussed the air quality changes between the reference scenario and the urban scenarios that have been designed by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB)’s office of urban planning. She presented air quality changes for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and ozone (O3) using the WRF-Chem model. Results show that 1) changes in NO2 and O3 are found in the morning and evening (anthropogenic emission peak) for agriculture, and, nighttime (urban heat island effect is the strongest) for urban scenarios, 2) changes in land-use impact local air quality, 3) a significant increase is seen for NH 3 concentrations when we include more agriculture and 4) decrease in O3 and increase in NO2 concentrations when we include the irrigation (morning). For more information on the conference, please visit this link.