Proposal for a supplemental
Cooperative Research Agreement
CX 825834
Project Period: May 1, 1998- April 30, 2001
Ozone and PM Air Quality Analysis in Support of Public
Needs
Sub- Projects:
Regional Haze and PM2.5 Analysis
Monitoring Network Assessment: Information
Value of Integrated, Multipurpose Networks
Visualization of transboundary air pollutant
transport to the US
Principal Investigator:
Rudolf B. Husar
Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis (CAPITA)
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
$160,000 Budget Supplement
Budget period August 1, 2000-April 30, 2001
Submitted to Project Officer:
Lara Autry
OAQPS, MD-19, USEPA
Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
July 6, 2000
Regional Haze and PM2.5 Analysis
Background
This is a brief proposal to EPA OAQPS as part of the Cooperative Agreement CX
825834 "Ozone and PM Air Quality Analysis in Support of Public Needs" between EPA
and CAPITA.
The new haze regulations will require the states to estimate the level of haze based upon
the chemical composition of the dry ambient aerosol. The states as well as the general
public needs to better understand the causal mechanism for haze as well as the
relationship between the measured PM2.5concentrations and the haze regulations. The
purpose of the proposed analysis is to provide background information on haze including
the PM2.5-haze relationship. The information will be presented in such a way that it can
aid all the main stakeholders involved including federal, state and local agencies as well
as the interested public.
In addition, the first year of the FRM PM2.5 data, collected by the National fine particle
monitoring network, is due to be delivered by the States to AIRS by March 31, 2000.
CAPITA will cooperate with OAQPS in obtaining and exploring these data, followed by
initial analysis of these data.
The specific goals of the this sub-project has three parts:
1) Write a chapter on haze for the PM Analysis Workbook.
2) Explore the first year of FRM PM2.5 data examining the content of the database, its
quality and generating overall statistics.
Haze Chapter for the PM Analysis Workbook
The new haze regulations require states to establish baseline haze levels and the natural
conditions, i.e. haze levels that would exist without anthropogenic contributions, for all
Class I areas. In addition, all states will need to access their contributions to haze in
Class I areas and provide State Implementation Plans to remove their contributions to the
anthropogenic haze in the Class I areas. The PMfine workbook haze chapter will contain
three sections to aid states in complying with the new haze rules.
1) Background information on the physical mechanism responsible for haze.
Many states are unfamiliar with the causal factor of haze. Therefore, a section that
provides background information on haze from the nature of light to its interaction
with ambient particles will be provided. There are a number of excellent sources of
information on the causes of haze such as the 1978 Visibility Report to Congress,
the NAPAP report Volume 24 and the more recent publication "Introduction to
Visibility" by William Malm that will be drawn upon for this section.
2) Relationship between haze and PM2.5. The new haze regulations require haze
levels to be estimated from measured aerosol samples. This section of the
2
workbook will describe the relationship between haze and PM2.5, as well as
established technique for reconstructing haze from the measured aerosol samples.
3) Fine mass and haze patterns and trends. National and seasonal patterns of the
PM2.5 mass, its constituents and the haze levels reconstructed from the aerosol
data will be presented. In addition National haze maps derived from visibility
airport concentrations and their long-term trends, i.e. from 1940-95, will be
presented. Last, estimates of the natural background levels as report in the NAPAP
report will be provided.
Exploration of FRM PM2.5 Data - Year 1
The national PM2.5 network has been in operation since January 1999 and the first year
of data will be available from AIRS for analysis in early April. CAPITA will cooperate
with OAQPS in the initial analysis of these data in four ways:
1) Enhancing the data availability. The FRM PM2.5 data will be available from the
EPA AIRS database. Experience has shown that there are a number of resistances
to accessing AIRS data which are difficult for most people to overcome.
Therefore, CAPITA will obtain all FRM PM2.5 data from AIRS, and reformat it
into ASCII and Voyager files. These resulting data files will be made available via
the PMfine workbook website.
2) FRM PM2.5 monitoring sites and data collection statistics. The overall
distribution of the data will be documented. This will include maps of the location
of the monitoring sites, the monitoring sites starting dates and the monitoring sites
collection statistics.
3) Quality assurance and control of the database. Initial quality assurance and
control will be conducted by examining the data for each site for spatial and
temporal consistency. This cursory examination will be designed to identify
outlying data points.
4) PM2.5 data analysis. Simple statistical analyses examining overall spatial and
temporal patterns of the data will be conducted. These analyses will include
examination of PM2.5 seasonal maps as well regional statistics including, mean,
standard deviation, and the upper and lower percentiles.
The initial exploration of the database will be completed by the end of May, in time for
EPA's initial FRM PM2.5 data report. More detailed data analysis of the data will
continue after May. The exact analyses to be conducted will be guided by the results of
the initial analysis and feedback from interaction with the data users.
Schedule
The work will be conducted during August, 2000 – April, 2001. Intermediate outputs will
be discussed with the Project Officer, Lara Autry.
3
Budget
The budget for the project is $40,000. The detailed budget is listed in the attachment. The
project will be conducted through incremental funding to the Cooperative Agreement CX
825834 between EPA and CAPITA “Ozone and PM Air Quality Analysis in Support of
Public Needs”.
Personnel
The project will be conducted by Professor Rudolf B. Husar, director of the Center for
Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis. One or two graduate students will participate in
the project. Drs. Stefan Falke and Bret Schichtel will serve as consultants to the project.
4
Monitoring Network Assessment: Information Value of
Integrated, Multipurpose Networks
Background
Recently, EPA/OAQPS has initiated a new program to make the existing air quality
networks more responsive to the needs of air quality management. This may involve
adding and removing stations, and samplers as well as modifying their operating
procedures. New samplers are added to the network when a pollutant needs to be
characterized in more detail, e.g. characterization of ozone precursors through PAMS.
New samplers are also added to the network when a new standard is established as in the
case of PM2.5. In general, all these activities tend to increase the number of monitoring
sites and the associated national expense for maintaining the increasing air quality
monitoring networks.
Removal of monitoring stations or samplers has been avoided by applying the rationale
that:
a) The more data are being collected the better off we are.
b) It is good to have a long-term record from the same site.
c) It is not clear how to evaluate the relative importance of different monitoring sites
and samplers, so might as well keep the stations operating.
Given the limited financial resources available for monitoring the above-described
network growth is not sustainable and results in sub-optimal resource utilization.
Network optimization requires stating the network purposes such as monitoring for
compliance with NAAQS or documenting trends. The network purpose leads to the
specification of the network evaluation criteria. Network optimization may apply
subjective and objective evaluation criteria. Subjective criteria are those that arise during
discussion of the network management process and involve from the subjective
judgements of the participants. Objective methods of network evaluation can be
formulated algorithmically and can be used to support the network management
decisions.
The development of the network optimization algorithms is hampered by several
difficulties including:
1. The network optimization paradox: in order to evaluate the network's ability to
characterize the 'reality', the reality needs to be known. If the reality is fully
known, there is no particular need to monitor.
2. Network integration problem: air quality monitoring networks are generally not
monolithic but they are composed of sub-networks with subtle and sometimes
significant differences in samplers and sampling protocols. Network optimization
requires the integration and fusion of sub-networks (e.g. PM2.5, FRM, IMPROVE,
CASTNET, possibly Supersites)
3. Multipurpose utilization of networks: the air quality data from a given sampler can
be used for multiple purposes where each purpose, may demand different
evaluation criteria. For example, the evaluation based on NAAQS compliance
needs to adhere to the criteria set by the regulatory standard. On the other hand,
the use of the data for source attribution may apply multiple criteria using many
different source-attribution methods.
Purpose of the Project
The purpose of the project is to develop a set of objective, network evaluation algorithms,
and to apply those algorithms to assess the network performance for the criteria
pollutants (O3, PM2.5, CO, SO2 NOX), with special emphasis on O3 and PM2.5.
Specific Objectives of this Work
The specific objectives set forth for this project are three fold:
1. Develop objective criteria and algorithms by which the network performance can
be evaluated.
2. Integrate the existing network data into a homogeneous datasets with special
emphasis on O3 and PM2.5.
2. Apply the developed algorithms to the best available integrated data sets to
evaluate the network performance from multiple perspectives.
Approach
The approach to the project follows closely the list of specific objectives stated above.
Objective criteria and algorithms for network performance evaluation
A key concept for developing a network evaluation criteria is the information value
contributed by each station. The information value, I, is composed of two parts: E and
W. The parameter E represents the error reduction (uncertainty reduction) that a given
station contributes. The value of E is large for those stations whose data are substantially
different than estimates derived by other means, e.g. extrapolation from neighboring
stations. The value of E is small if the concentration values estimated by other means are
the same as the measured value. In this latter case, the station does not add information,
i.e. does not reduce the uncertainty of concentration estimates.
The magnitude of W represents a weighing factor that weights the importance of a given
measurement from the point of view of pollutant impacts. For example, in case of
population exposure, the value of W may be taken in proportion to the number of people
in the region of influence of a given station. The overall value of the information
provided by a given station is then composed of (1) how much it reduces the overall
concentration uncertainty and (2) how much weight is given to the station due to the
receptor impacts.
The above-illustrated algorithm represents one possible way of evaluating a network
performance. This method has been explored in a brief preliminary study that is
available "Information Value of Air Quality Network Stations: Illustration for Ozone
6
Monitoring over the Eastern US"
http://capita.wustl.edu/CAPITA/capitareports/NetInfoValue/NetInfoValue.htm
The above example illustrates the network evaluation based on spatial coverage. It is
clear that evaluation for detecting trends will require a development of additional criteria.
Integration of network data with special emphasis on O3 and PM2.5.
In order to evaluate the performance of the existing networks for the criteria pollutants
the most recently available data need to be accessed including the NAMS/SLAMS,
IMPROVE, and CASTNET networks. In the past CAPITA has integrated these data sets.
The available ozone data sets from NAMS/SLAMS and CASNET were integrated in
order to provide science support to the OTAG process. The report that describes the
ozone data integration effort can be found at the website below: "Ozone Data Integration
for OTAG Air Quality Analysis and Model Evaluation"
http://capita.wustl.edu/CAPITA/Awma98/HTTP/98_A929.htm
The available PM2.5 data sets were also integrated during Year 1 of this cooperative
agreement (CX 825834). The report describing the integrated fine particle data sets can
be found on the website: "North American Integrated Fine Particle Data"
http://capita.wustl.edu/datawarehouse/Datasets/CAPITA/NAMPM_25/Data/NAMPM25.html
"North American Integrated Fine Particle Data Set"
http://capita.wustl.edu/CAPITA/CapitaReports/Awma99/NamPM/NAMPMdata.htm
The integrated data sets will need to be updated. This is particularly important for the
PM2.5 data since the PM2.5 network has been expanding rapidly since the introduction
of the PM2.5 standard in 1998.
Application of network performance evaluation algorithms to the best available
integrated data sets
In this task we will apply the developed network evaluation algorithms to the integrated
data sets, with particular emphasis on ozone and PM2.5. An example of algorithm testing
is given in the report "Information Value of Air Quality Network Stations: Illustration for
Ozone Monitoring over the Eastern US"
http://capita.wustl.edu/CAPITA/capitareports/NetInfoValue/NetInfoValue.htm
The network evaluation will be conducted for the entire conterminous US territory.
In developing and applying the algorithms we will seek close interaction with analysts
within OAQPS as well as with interested participants from the states.
Output of the Work
The output of this activity will roughly coincide with the three tasks outlined in the
Approach Section:
1. New algorithms for evaluating integrated networks using multiple evaluation
criteria.
7
2. Integrated data sets, updated through at least 1999 containing data on criteria
pollutants from NAMS/SLAMS, CASTNET, and IMPROVE networks.
3. Network performance evaluations will be provided that illustrate the information
value contributed by individual stations. The evaluations will be made for multiple
pollutants and evaluation criteria will include compliance with NAAQS,
determination of trends, delivery of the information to the public and source
identification.
The entire network evaluation plan as well as appropriate intermediate results will be
posted on the CAPITA website for purposes of interaction with interested collaborating
analysts and managers.
Schedule
The work will be conducted during August, 2000 – April, 2001. Intermediate outputs will
be discussed with the Project Officers, Laurel Schultz and Richard Scheffe.
Budget
The budget for the project is $90,000. The detailed budget is listed in the attachment. The
project will be conducted through incremental funding to the Cooperative Agreement CX
825834 between EPA and CAPITA “Ozone and PM Air Quality Analysis in Support of
Public Needs”
Personnel
The project will be conducted by Professor Rudolf B. Husar, director of the Center for
Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis. One or two graduate students will participate in
the project. Drs. Stefan Falke and Bret Schichtel will serve as consultants to the project.
8
Visualization of Transboundary Air Pollutant Transport
to the US
Background.
Anthropogenic and natural pollutants generated in one country are regularly transported
to other countries adding to their air quality burden. This is particularly true for Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POP) that reside in the atmosphere for days or weeks.
The transboundary transport affects the seasonal and yearly average concentrations in the
US by elevating the ‘background’ levels. Local emissions are then superimposed on this
elevated background, leaving less margin for homegrown contributions. Transboundary
transport is also episodic, i.e. highly non-uniform in time.
This is a continuation of work conducted under the project: "Investigation of Regional
and Global Transport and Deposition of Persistent Organic Pollutants", a collaborative
research projected between the North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC) and the
Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis (CAPITA). The results of the
CAPITA contribution to that project are available at the webpage:
(http://capita.wustl.edu/CAPITA/CapitaReports/POPs/AMH_anal/NAM_AMH_Spr99.ht
m)
Goal of the Project
Overall goal of the work is to create visualizations of transboundary airmass transport to
the United States. The visualizations need to be suitable for presentation to national and
international policy analysts.
Specific Objectives of this Work
The previous analysis examined the probable airmass pathways to 9 receptor sites during
the spring of 1999. This proposed projected will expand on the previous work in three
ways:
1. Airmass history residence time analysis will be conducted for 12 receptor sites
including two sites in Alaska.
2. Airmass transport probabilities for the West Coast will be aggregated
3. Airmass transport pathways will be derived for all four seasons of 1999 as well as
the yearly average.
Approach
Residence time analysis will be used to estimate the probable airmass transport pathways
to the US border for each season as well as for the entire year of 1999. The residence
time analysis uses back trajectories to estimate the fraction of time airmasses reside over
a given region prior to impacting the receptor. By placing a uniform grid over a region
and calculating the fraction of residence time for each cell residence time probability
maps can be constructed. The most probable airmass pathways are then the regions with
the highest airmass residence probability.
This analysis will use an airmass history database consisting of ten day airmass histories
for receptor sites space ~ 100 km apart along the boundaries of the conterminous US and
Alaska. The airmass histories will be calculated every 6 hours over the year 1999 using
the CAPITA Monte Carlo Model driven by the FNL global meteorological data. The
FNL data will be obtained from the Air Resource Laboratories READY website and be
reprocessed for suitable input into the Monte Carlo Model.
Residence time probability fields will be calculated for each receptor site in the database
for a winter, spring, summer and fall seasons of 1999, where the winter season is
comprised of the months December, January, and February. The residence time analysis
for West Coast, will be conducted by integrating the residence time analyses for each
receptor along the West Coast.
Fig. 1. Location of US receptor sites
Output of the Work
The main product of this work will be seasonal and yearly maps of airmass transport
probabilities to each of the receptor site as well as to the West Coast. The general map
layout is illustrated below.
10
We will also explore additional displays including animations and 3D rendering of
transport.
Schedule
The work will be conducted during August, 2000 – April, 2001. Intermediate
visualization outputs will be discussed with the Project Officer, Angela L. Bandemehr.
Budget
The budget for the project is $30,000. The detailed budget is listed in the attachment. The
project will be conducted through incremental funding to the Cooperative Agreement CX
825834 between EPA and CAPITA “Ozone and PM Air Quality Analysis in Support of
Public Needs”
Personnel
The project will be conducted by Professor Rudolf B. Husar, director of the Center for
Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis. He will be assisted by one or two graduate
students. Dr. Bret Schichtel will serve as a consultant to the project regarding the
trajectory computations.
11
PROJECT TITLE: OZONE AND PM AIR QUALITY ANALYSIS IN SUPPORT OF PUBLIC NEEDS
PROJECT PERIOD: 05/01/1998 - 04/30/2001
EPA ASSISTANCE ID NO. CX 825834-01-2
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: RUDOLF HUSAR
SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDING REQUEST
Monitoring Network Assessment: Information Value of Integrated, Multipurpose Networks
Regional Haze and PM2.5 Analysis
Visualization of transboundary air pollutant transport to the US
EPA
WU
TOTAL
Salaries
Rudolf B. Husar, PI
Graduate Research Assistant
Undergraduate Lab Asst.
55,251
12,000
2,200
4,578
59,829
12,000
2,200
Total Salaries
69,451
4,578
74,029
Fringe Benefits
10,918
905
11,823
Total Salaries and Fringe Benefits
80,369
5,483
85,852
Travel
2 person trips to a technical meeting
2,400
0
2,400
Equipment
1 pentium grade computer and peripheral equipment
5,500
0
5,500
Other Expenses
Software library charges
Telephone long distance / fax charges
Computer network charges
Publication charges
2,670
0
2,670
14,400
0
14,400
105,339
5,483
110,822
16,640
83,198
9,318
45,343
914
4,569
512
2,490
17,554
87,767
9,830
47,833
160,000
8,485
168,485
Consulting
Bret A. Schichtel
Bryan Van Hook
Stephan R. Falke
Total Direct Costs
Total Indirect Cost Base @56.0%
Total Indirect Cost Base @ 54.5%
Indirect Cost @56.0% MTDC, current
Indirect Cost @54.5% MTDC, effective 7/1/00
Total Indirect Costs
Total Direct and Indirect Costs
12