Evaluation of air quality for ozone in the metropolitan region of Campinas

• Grant number: 06/54356-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2007
• End date: May 31, 2009
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Meteorology
• Principal Investigator: Maria de Fátima Andrade
• Grantee: Maria de Fátima Andrade
• Host Institution: Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

It is proposed to study the meteorological chemical factors and emissions, which determine the air quality in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas (RMC), especially the formation of ozone, with the possibility of indices of air quality for that pollutant. The motivation for carrying out this work comes from the preliminar results obtained by Cetesb in the monitoring of ozone, carried out during the first 11 months of 2003, in Americana (40 km from Campinas), which classified for that period the air of that city as being the second most polluted by ozone in the interior of the State of São Paulo, attributing this poor air quality to episodes of ozone transport from the source regions of Campinas and Paulínia, by mechanisms of local circulation. For this study we will use the CIT photochemical model (air quality model of the Caltech Institute of Technology). The model will be calibrated beforehand with the data on surface ozone collected from the air quality stations of Cetesb for critical periods in terms of concentration for the years 2003 and 2004 and later, based on prediction of air quality, we will define the period of carrying out a campaign for the launch of ECC (Electrochemical Concentration Cell) ozonesondes, aimed at validating the results of the modeling with experimental data of vertical profiles of ozone. This campaign will be conducted in partnerships with the Inpe Ozone Laboratory. An experiment of ozone soundings will be carried out in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (RMSP), within the ambit of the public policy project Photochemical models of air quality: implementation for simulation and evaluation of tropospheric concentrations of ozone in urban regions. It is intended that the experiments should be carried out in the same period, permitting, thus, the description of the transport between these metropolitan regions. At a later stage, it is aimed to carry out simulations, using the RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System) meteorological model, which has a simplified chemical mechanism being set up for the management of the entry parameters: meteorological, air circulation and ozone concentration, for the purposes of comparison with the results obtained when using data from Cetesb in the CIT photochemical model of air quality. (AU)