Abstract
The community multiscale air quality (CMAQ) model was evaluated in the metropolitan region of Salvador (MRS), which is the capital of the state of Bahia, Brazil. Once located at the tropics, two episodes were selected (one in the dry season and another in the rainy season), in order to perform the assessment. The meteorological information required for air quality modeling was driven by the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model: its performance was evaluated against observational data collected by monitoring stations located in Salvador city, Brazil. For the emissions inventory, we applied the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), in conjunction with an estimated emissions inventory of local point sources located in the major industrial complexes, in addition with the biogenic emissions estimated by the model of emissions of gases and aerosols from nature (MEGAN). To compute these different emissions sources, we used the sparse matrix operator kernel emission (SMOKE). Following that, the CMAQ model was applied, in order to simulate the chemical transport and formation of air pollutants based on the meteorological and emissions input previously described. The required boundary conditions were determined by also applying the CMAQ model, which used data from the MEGAN and EDGAR inventories, to a larger domain that incorporates the domain in which the MRS is represented. The application of these modeling tools was shown to be a good practice in the assessment of air quality in urban areas; thus, this work aims to be the first great effort to study, simulate and validate the chemical transport of pollutants over the MRS, based on a hybrid emissions inventory and using the state of the art in the computational atmospheric modeling field.