title: An emission processing system for air quality modelling in the Mexico City metropolitan area: Evaluation and comparison of the MOBILE6.2-Mexico and MOVES-Mexico traffic emissions.
abstract: This article describes the High-Elective Resolution Modelling Emission System for Mexico (HERMES-Mex) model, an emission processing tool developed to transform the official Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) emission inventory into hourly, gridded (up to 1km2) and speciated emissions used to drive mesoscale air quality simulations with the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. The methods and ancillary information used for the spatial and temporal disaggregation and speciation of the emissions are presented and discussed. The resulting emission system is evaluated, and a case study on CO, NO2, O3, VOC and PM2.5concentrations is conducted to demonstrate its applicability. Moreover, resulting traffic emissions from the Mobile Source Emission Factor Model for Mexico (MOBILE6.2-Mexico) and the MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator for Mexico (MOVES-Mexico) models are integrated in the tool to assess and compare their performance. NOxand VOC total emissions modelled are reduced by 37% and 26% in the MCMA when replacing MOBILE6.2-Mexico for MOVES-Mexico traffic emissions. In terms of air quality, the system composed by the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) coupled with the HERMES-Mex and CMAQ models properly reproduces the pollutant levels and patterns measured in the MCMA. The system's performance clearly improves in urban stations with a strong influence of traffic sources when applying MOVES-Mexico emissions. Despite reducing estimations of modelled precursor emissions, O3peak averages are increased in the MCMA core urban area (up to 30ppb) when using MOVES-Mexico mobile emissions due to its VOC-limited regime, while concentrations in the surrounding suburban/rural areas decrease or increase depending on the meteorological conditions of the day. The results obtained suggest that the HERMES-Mex model can be used to provide model-ready emissions for air quality modelling in the MCMA.
authors.affiliation: Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: marc.guevara@bsc.es.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guevara
authors.affiliation: Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tena
authors.affiliation: Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Soret
authors.affiliation: Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Serradell
authors.affiliation: Secretaría del Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de México, Dirección General de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guzmán
authors.affiliation: Secretaría del Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de México, Dirección General de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Retama
authors.affiliation: Secretaría del Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de México, Dirección General de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Camacho
authors.affiliation: Secretaría del Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de México, Dirección General de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jaimes-Palomera
authors.affiliation: Secretaría del Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de México, Dirección General de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire, Ciudad de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mediavilla
keywords: Air quality modelling; Emission processing system; MOBILE6.2-Mexico; MOVES-Mexico; Ozone; Road transport emissions