• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.82-99
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• 2016

This study was carried out to understand the regional contribution of Particulate Matter (PM) emissions from East Asia ($82^{\circ}{\sim}149^{\circ}E$, $18^{\circ}{\sim}53^{\circ}N$) to Seoul during high concentration period in February 2014. The Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) version 5.0.2 with Decoupled Direct Method (DDM) was used to analyze levels of contributions over Seoul. In order to validate model performance of the CMAQ, predicted PM and its chemical species concentrations were compared to observations in China and Seoul. Model predictions could depict the daily and hourly variations of observed PM. The calculated PM concentrations, however, had a tendency of underestimation. The discrepancies are due to uncertainties of meteorological data, emission inventories and CMAQ model itself. The high PM concentration in Seoul was induced by stationary anticyclone over the West Coast of Korea during 24 to 27 February. The DDM in CMAQ was used to analyze the contributions of emissions from East Asia on Seoul during this PM episode. $PM_{10}$ concentration in Seoul is contributed by 39.77%~53.19% from China industrial and urban region, 15.37%~37.10% from South Korea, and 9.03%~18.05% North Korea. These indicate that $PM_{10}$ concentrations in Seoul during the episode period are dominated by long-range transport from China region as well as domestic sources. It was also found that the largest contribution region in China were Shandong peninsula during the PM event period.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.306-320
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• 2018

Emission inventory is the essential component for improving the performance of air quality forecasting system. This study evaluated the simulated daily mean $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations in South Korea and China for 1-year period (Sept. 2016~Aug. 2017) using air quality forecasting system which was applied by the emission inventory of E2015 (predicted CAPSS 2015 for South Korea and KORUS 2015 v1 for the other regions). To identify the impacts of emissions on the simulated $PM_{2.5}$, the emission inventory replaced by E2010 (CAPSS 2010 and MIX 2010) were also applied under the same forecasting conditions. These results showed that simulated daily mean $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations had generally suitable performance with both emission data-sets for China (IOA>0.87, R>0.87) and South Korea (IOA>0.84, R>0.76). The impacts of the changes in emission inventories on simulated daily mean $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations were quantitatively estimated. In China, normalized mean bias (NMB) showed 5.5% and 26.8% under E2010 and E2015, respectively. The tendency of overestimated concentrations was larger in North Central and Southeast China than other regions under both E2010 and E2015. Seasonal differences of NMB were higher in non-winter season (28.3% (E2010)~39.3% (E2015)) than winter season (-0.5% (E2010)~8.0% (E2015)). In South Korea, NMB showed -5.4% and 2.8% for all days, but -15.2% and -11.2% for days below $40{\mu}g/m^3$ to minimize the impacts of long-range transport under E2010 and E2015, respectively. For all days, simulated $PM_{2.5}$ concentrations were overestimated in Seoul, Incheon, Southern part of Gyeonggi and Daejeon, and underestimated in other regions such as Jeonbuk, Ulsan, Busan and Gyeongnam, regardless of what emission inventories were applied. Our results suggest that the updated emission inventory, which reflects current status of emission amounts and spatio-temporal allocations, is needed for improving the performance of air quality forecasting.