RESEARCH ARTICLE Improving Surface PM2.5 Forecasts in the United States 10.1029/2019JD032293 Using an Ensemble of Chemical Transport Model Key Points: • The chemical transport models Outputs: 1. Bias Correction With Surface (GEOS‐Chem, WRF‐Chem, and WRF‐CMAQ) show systematically Observations in Nonrural Areas low bias of PM2.5 Huanxin Zhang1,2 , Jun Wang1,2 , Lorena Castro García1,2, Cui Ge1,2 , Todd Plessel3, • Model output postprocessing with 4 4 4 surface data and the ensemble James Szykman , Benjamin Murphy , and Tanya L. Spero Kalman filter technique improves 1 2 the PM2.5 forecast at both local and Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA, Center for Global urban scale and Regional Environmental Research, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA, 3General Dynamics Information • The Successive Correction Method Technology, RTP, NC, USA, 4U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, RTP, NC, USA extends the PM2.5 forecast improvement from the local to regional scale Abstract This work is the first of a two‐part study that aims to develop a computationally efficient bias correction framework to improve surface PM2.5 forecasts in the United States. Here, an ensemble‐based Kalman filter (KF) technique is developed primarily for nonrural areas with approximately 500 surface Correspondence to: observation sites for PM and applied to three (GEOS‐Chem, WRF‐Chem, and WRF‐CMAQ) chemical H. Zhang and J. Wang, 2.5
[email protected]; transport model (CTM) hindcast outputs for June 2012. While all CTMs underestimate daily surface PM2.5
[email protected] mass concentration by 20–50%, KF correction is effective for improving each CTM forecast.