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

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.

BESSAGNET Bertrand;  PISONI Enrico;  DE MEIJ Alexander;  LETINOIS Laurent;  THUNIS Philippe; 

2025-12-17

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC130101

1873-6726 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364815223000786,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130101,   

10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105692 (online),