Impact of two chemistry mechanisms fully coupled with mesoscale model on the atmospheric pollutants distribution

Air quality models (AQM) consist of many modules (meteorology, emission, chemistry, deposition), and in some conditions such as: vicinity of clouds or aerosols plumes, complex local circulations (mountains, sea breezes), fully coupled models (online method) are necessary. In order to study the impact of lumped chemical mechanisms in AQM simulations, we examine the ability of both different chemical mechanisms: (i) simplified: Condensed Version of the MOdèle de Chimie Atmosphérique 2.2 (CV-MOCA2.2), and (ii) reference: Regional Atmospheric Chemistry Model (RACM), which are coupled online with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling Systems (RAMS) model, on the distribution of pollutants. During the ESCOMPTE experiment (Expérience sur Site pour COntraindre les Modèles de Pollution et de Transport d’Emissions) conducted over Southern France (including urban and industrial zones), Intensive observation periods (IOP) characterized by various meteorological and mixed chemical conditions are simulated. For both configurations of modeling, numerical results are compared with surface measurements (75 stations) for primary (NOx) and secondary (O3) species. We point out the impact of the two different chemical mechanisms on the production of species involved in the oxidizing capacity such as ozone and radicals within urban and industrial areas. We highlight that both chemical mechanisms produce very similar results for the main pollutants (NOx and O3) in three-dimensional (3D) distribution, despite large discrepancies in 0D modeling. For ozone concentration, we found sometimes small differences (5–10 ppb) between the mechanisms under study according to the cases (polluted or not). The relative difference between the two mechanisms over the whole domain is only −7% for ozone from CV-MOCA 2.2 versus RACM. When the order of magnitude is needed rather than an accurate estimate, a reduced mechanism is satisfactory. It has the advantage of running faster (four times less than CPU time on SGI 3800 with 30 processors). Simplified mechanisms are really important to study cases for which an online coupling is necessary between meso-scale and chemistry models (clouds or aerosols plumes impacts, highly variable meteorology).