A simple and fast method to downscale chemistry transport model output fields from the regional to the urban/district scale

Abstract

For policy applications, the need to improve the resolution of environmental variables is crucial. Air pollution assessment indeed requires the use of air pollutant concentration fields at a high resolution, to better evaluate the exposure of citizens. In this paper, we propose a fast proxy-based downscaling strategy, to downscale air quality modelling results using the fraction of the pollutant concentration influenced by precursor emissions in a given cell. The approach combines in an additive way (i) a classically interpolated background pollutant fraction, with (ii) a proxy-based concentration derived from the emissions. The proxy-based pollutant fraction is spread over the high resolution mesh into the surrounding cells with a Gaussian approach to account for diffusion effects. The evaluation of our approach against observations shows its relevance to create reliable air pollution concentration fields at a higher resolution, starting from a coarse resolution modelling results.