TSD-1b

Processing of Biogenic Emissions for OTC / MANE-VU

Modeling

Bureau of Air Quality Analysis and Research

Division of Air Resources

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

Albany, NY 12233

September 19, 2006
Biogenic emissions for the time period from January 1, 2002 – December 31, 2002 were

calculated by NYSDEC using the Biogenic Emissions Inventory System (BEIS) version

3.12 integrated within SMOKE2.1. General information about BEIS is available at

http://www.epa.gov/AMD/biogen.html while documentation about biogenic emissions

processing within SMOKE2.1 is available at

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch06s10.html and

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch06s17.html . Note that the

SMOKE documentation refers to BEIS3.09 and has not yet been updated for BEIS3.12.

This affects the number of species modeled as well as the use of different speciation

profiles. However, the general processing approach has not changes from BEIS3.09 to

BEIS3.12. In short, this processing approach is as follows and was utilized by NYSDEC

for its biogenic emission processing for 8-hr ozone and PM2.5 modeling:

1. Normbeis3 reads gridded land use data and emissions factors and produces gridded

normalized biogenic emissions for 34 species/compounds. The gridded land use

includes 230 different land use types. Both summer and winter emissions factors for

each species/compound are provided for each of the 230 land use types. On output,

Normbeis3 generates a file B3GRD which contains gridded summer and winter

emission fluxes for the modeling domain that are normalized to 30 °C and a

photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) of 1000 μmol/m2s. In addition, gridded

summer and winter leaf area indices (LAI) are also written to B3GRD. 

2. Tmpbeis3 reads the gridded, normalized emissions file B3GRD and meteorological

data from the MCIP-processed MM5 meteorological fields generated by the

University of Maryland for MANE-VU/OTC modeling. Specifically, the following

MM5/MCIP meteorological variables are used by Tmpbeis3 to compute hourspecific, gridded biogenic emissions from the normalized emission fluxed contained

in B3GRD: layer-1 air temperature (“TA”), layer-1 pressure (“PRES”), total

incoming solar radiation at the surface (“RGRND”), and convective (“RC”) and

non-convective (“RN”) rainfall. Additionally, the emissions for the 34

species/compounds modeled by BEIS3.12 are converted to CO, NO, and the CB-IV
VOC species utilized in CMAQ via the use of the BEIS3.12-CB-IV speciation

profile. In adition, an optional seasonal switch file, BIOSEASON, was utilized to

decide whether to use summer or winter emissions factors for any given grid cell on

any given day. This file was generated by the SMOKE2.1 utility Metscan based on

MM5 layer-1 air temperatures to determine the date of the last spring frost and first

fall frost at each grid cell. Summer emission factors are used by Tmpbeis3 for the

time period between the last spring frost and first fall frost at any given grid cell,

and winter emission factors are used for the remaining time period. Documentation

for the Metscan utility is available at

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch05s07.html . An

animated GIF file showing the BIOSEASON file used by NYSDEC can be found at

ftp://ftp.dec.state.ny.us/dar/air_research/chogrefe/biog_reports/b3season_movie.gif

3. For reporting purposes, the hourly, speciated, gridded emissions were aggregated to

the county level for each day. For any given grid cell, emissions are distributed

among the counties intersecting this grid cell in proportion to the area of each of

these counties within the grid cell. The area gridding surrogates needed for this

aggregration are based on a file obtained from EPA via

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/emch/spatial/new/bgpro.12km_041604.us.gz followed

by windowing for the MANE-VU/OTC modeling domain.