Notable examples during recent years include smoke emissions due to numerous wildfires over large parts of western North America and high surface ozone episodes during heat waves across the eastern United States.
We work across the Weather Enterprise to improve air quality forecast operations and NOAA’s air quality services to the public.
Air quality has improved significantly in recent decades following passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, but there is still work to be done to improve air quality forecasts. To help the nation mitigate impacts from air quality events, NOAA works with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state and local air quality agencies, academia, and the private sector to provide air quality forecast capabilities for the Nation through the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC).
WPO’s Air Quality & Fire Weather Program competitively funds NOAA laboratories, academic partners, and commercial industry through grants and cooperative agreements to test and demonstrate new, cutting-edge forecast capabilities with a goal of transitioning to the National Weather Service (NWS) air quality forecast operations and improving NOAA’s air quality services to the public. Recently funded projects have focused on air quality research and forecasting that are relatively mature (i.e. generally falling in or near the “demonstration” level of technical maturity) and not in the early stages of development or proof-of-concept.
The Weather Program Office is working with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to incorporate a state-of-the-science fire behavior model (WRF-FIRE) that accounts for fire-atmosphere feedbacks into the Unified Forecast System (UFS). The fire behavior model will largely increase…
The Weather Program Office is working with Northeastern University and George Mason University to enhance the high resolution forecasting capability of the National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) based on the inline Rapid-Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)- Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)…
Use of Novel Satellite Data and In-Canopy Processes to Improve U.S. Air Quality Predictions. PI Name & Contact: Patrick Campbell (pcampbe8@gmu.edu; patrick.c.campbell@noaa.gov). The Weather Program Office is working with George Mason University to advance the next-generation Rapid-Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)-Community…
