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CSIRO OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland Julie Noonan, Martin Cope, Sarah J. Lawson, Jennifer C. Powell, Suzie Molloy, Marcus Thatcher and Kathryn Emmerson 2019 Final Report for the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA), Project No G.3 ISBN (print): 978-1-4863-1285-6 ISBN (online): 978-1-4863-1286-3 Citation Julie Noonan, Martin Cope, Sarah J. Lawson, Jennifer C. Powell, Suzie Molloy, Marcus Thatcher and Kathryn Emmerson, 2019 Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland 2019, CSIRO, Australia. Copyright © Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation 2019. To the extent permitted by law, all rights are reserved and no part of this publication covered by copyright may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any averages except with the written permission of CSIRO. 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Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland | i Contents Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................. xiii Glossary xiv Executive summary ........................................................................................................................... xvii 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 23 2 The CTM modelling system ................................................................................................... 26 3 Emission Inventory ................................................................................................................ 31 3.1 Surat Basin anthropogenic emission inventory........................................................ 32 3.2 Australian emissions inventories (including soil, bushfires, vegetation and wider anthropogenic sources) ............................................................ 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Bookmark not defined. 3.3 Assumptions, uncertainties and exclusions ............................................................. 38 4 Observational data ................................................................................................................ 43 5 Results and Discussion ........................................................................................................... 46 5.1 PM2.5 ......................................................................................................................... 50 5.2 Ozone ........................................................................................................................ 73 5.3 Nitrogen Dioxide ....................................................................................................... 92 5.4 Carbon Monoxide ................................................................................................... 113 5.5 Air Toxics ................................................................................................................. 127 5.6 Representativeness of observation sites to wider region ...................................... 156 5.7 Implications of model assumptions, uncertainties and exclusions ........................ 162 5.8 Relationship of the model findings to the monitoring study ................................. 164 6 Summary and next steps ..................................................................................................... 165 6.1 Summary of the study findings ............................................................................... 165 6.2 Significance of this study and next steps ............................................................... 166 7 References ........................................................................................................................... 168 Appendix A CCAM meteorological performance ....................................................................... 174 Appendix B CTM Performance Information .............................................................................. 191 Appendix C Sources and methodologies for local anthropogenic emission inventory ............. 203 Appendix D CTM-CCAM Time Series Plots ................................................................................. 217 Appendix E Extra plots: Modelled effect of CSG at various sites .............................................. 306 Appendix F Extra plots: O3 1-hour averages .............................................................................. 335 ii | Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland Appendix G Extra Town sites frequency plots ........................................................................... 345 Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland | iii Figures Figure 1.1 Study area including the regional modelling area (source: Lawson et al., 2017b). ......... 25 Figure 2.1 Schematic diagram showing the CCAM-CTM modelling framework used to simulate interactive emissions, transport and chemical transformation. ....................................................... 27 Figure 2.2 The CTM modelling grids: outer 50 km grid (50 km grid squares) with nested inner grids 9, 3 and 1 km. ............................................................................................................................ 29 Figure 2.3 Grids for the CTM modelling system - 3 and 1 km inner model grids and the Surat emissions inventory grid. Gas field sites (green and yellow) are ‘MAQ’ - Miles Airport air quality station, ‘CAQ’ - Condamine air quality station and ‘HAQ’ - Hopeland air quality station. Regional sites (green and yellow) are ‘TAQ’ - Tara Region air quality station, ‘BAQ’ - Burncluith air quality station. ‘Town’ sites (blue) are Chinchilla, Miles township, Roma, Tara township and Warra. ........ 30 Figure 3.1 Total air emissions for individual pollutants (kg/annum) for the Surat Basin region, from the Surat Basin emissions inventory. Data source: Katestone 2017. ....................................... 33 Figure 3.2 The Surat Basin Air Emissions Inventory – Source contribution (%) by industry sector or activity (from Katestone 2017). The Source Contribution scale ranges from 0 – 100%. .............. 34 Figure 3.3 The emissions inventory grid as well as nested 3 and 1 km modelling grids. Locations of the modelled CSG-related emission sources are also shown: blue = well areas, high point vent areas, other area sources, pink = stacks, flares, other point sources................................................ 36 Figure 5.1 The observed and modelled time series of the 1-hour average PM2.5 concentrations (µg m-3) at Miles Airport for the modelled year (red = model results with all sources, purple = model results without CSG sources, blue = observations). ............................................................... 51 Figure 5.2 The modelled contributions from the CSG-related emissions to the 1-hour average -3 PM2.5 concentrations (µg m ) at Miles Airport for the modelled year. ............................................ 52 Figure 5.3 Satellite picture on the 16/9/15 about midday (Terra / MODIS) showing a number of different areas of smoke, small red spots are ‘hot spots’, the blue dot locates Miles township and the Burncluith Air Quality station is indicated by an arrow (NASA Worldview, https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/). .......................................................................................... 54 -3 Figure 5.4 Spatial plots from the model results with all sources (left) PM2.5 (µg m ) and (right) levoglucosan (smoke tracer) (µg m-3), both are at 06:00 AEST on the 7th October 2015. ................ 55 Figure 5.5 The modelled contribution from the CSG-related emissions to the 24-hour average -3 PM2.5 concentration (µg m ) at the Gas field and Regional sites shown as a frequency distribution for each season. The x-axis shows the concentration ranges of the contribution from the CSG-related emissions and the y-axis shows the percentage of model hours. ................. 56 Figure 5.6 The modelled contribution from the CSG-related emissions to the 24-hour average -3 PM2.5 concentration (µg m ) at Miles Airport shown as a scatter plot for each season. The x-axis -3 shows the modelled 24-hour average PM2.5 concentrations with all sources (µg m ) and the y- axis shows the contribution from the CSG-related emissions to the 24-hour average PM2.5 concentration (µg m-3). ...................................................................................................................... 57 iv | Modelling air quality in the Surat Basin, Queensland -3 Figure 5.7 The maximum 24-hour