Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511

www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft

Application of a parallel photochemical air quality model to the

Campania region (southern Italy)
a, b,*
G. Barone , P. D’Ambra b, D. di Serafino b, c
, G. Giunta b, d
, A. Murli a, b
,
A. Riccio a, b
a
Department of Chemistry, University of Naples “Federico II”, via Mezzocannone 4, 80134 Naples, Italy
b
Center for Research on Parallel Computing and Supercomputers (CPS) — CNR, Naples, Italy
c
The Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy
d
Naval University of Naples, Naples, Italy

Abstract

During most of the year, the concentrations of both primary and secondary air pollutants over the Campania region (southern
Italy) do not comply with the Italian air quality standards. To gain insight into the chemical and meteorological processes that lead
to high air pollutant concentrations over this area, the parallel package PNAM (Parallel Naples Airshed Model) has been developed,
for the numerical simulation of photosmog episodes on urban and regional scale domains. PNAM has been applied to a photosmog
episode which occurred on 26 July 1995. On this day, due to the stagnant conditions and the intensive solar radiation, a high ozone
concentration was reported for the Naples basin. The performance of PNAM has been assessed by comparing measured air quality
data with simulated data for O3, NO, NO2 and CO. PNAM was able to reproduce temporal and spatial characteristics of measured
air quality data, although some discrepancies were evident, probably mainly due to the emission inventory, which was based only
on total annual emissions.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Air pollution modeling; Photosmog numerical simulation; Parallel computation

1. Introduction numerical simulation of air pollution episodes in urban

The Campania region, in southern Italy, is one of the
most densely-populated regions in Europe. The associa-
ted anthropogenic emissions result in high air pollution
levels, which often exceed the air quality standards set
by the Italian laws. To gain insight into the chemical and
meteorological processes that lead to high air pollutant
concentrations over this area, a research activity has
been carried out at the Center for Research on Parallel
Computing and Supercomputers (CPS–CNR) in Naples,
in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry of the
University “Federico II” and the Faculty of Environmen-
tal Science of the Naval University of Naples (Barone
et al., 1998a,b,c). This activity has led to the develop-
ment of the first version of a parallel software package,
the Parallel Naples Airshed Model (PNAM), for the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-081-2536602; fax:
0815527771.
E-mail address: barone@chemistry.unina.it (G. Barone).
and regional scale domains, on MIMD distributed-mem-
ory parallel machines. It is based on an Eulerian
approach, i.e. the pollutant dynamics are described by
solving the mass-balance equation for each chemical
compound. The present version includes the LCC chemi-
cal mechanism (Lurmann et al., 1987) and the same dry
deposition module used in the CIT airshed model
(Harley et al., 1993); symmetric time splitting is applied
to decouple advection and diffusion-chemistry operators.
The parallel implementation is based on grid partitioning
and dynamic load balancing is also addressed. The code
is written in Fortran 90 and is based on the parallel Run-
time Software Library (RSL) (Michalakes, 1994).
In this study, PNAM has been used to simulate a pho-
tosmog episode which occurred between 25 and 27 July
1995. During this period a high ozone concentration
(about 150 ppb) was observed for the Naples basin. In
addition, air quality data from the Campania region
+39- monitoring network (MARC) and meteorological
measurements from the monitoring network of the Naval
University and the Italian Meteorological Service were

1364-8152/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 3 6 4 - 8 1 5 2 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 0 - 2
504 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511
available, thus giving the possibility to validate model
results.
In Section 2 we outline the topographical features and
the air pollution situation of the Campania region. In
Section 3 we give a short description of PNAM, outli-
ning the mathematical model, the numerical solution
methods and parallel implementation issues. The photos-
mog case study which PNAM has been applied to, the
data setup and a discussion about the results of the
simulation are given in Section 4.
2. Campania region topography and air quality
situation
The geographical region under study is shown in Fig.
1. This region is characterized by complex topographical
features. The city of Naples is located on the coast and
is surrounded by fairly high mountains and hills on three
sides: the Camaldoli hills to the east and north and the
Vesuvio volcano (more than 1000 m) to the west. To the
south-east of Naples, the Monti Lattari mountain chain
extends about 30 km to the sea, determining two gulfs:
the Gulf of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno. A large flat
land extends to the north of Naples (the famous latin
Campania Felix). The inland territories are mountainous
and characterized by the presence of the Appennini
chain, with mountains higher than 2000 m. The southern
part of the Campania region (Cilento) is also a mountain-
ous region.
During the summer season the background synoptic
flow is generally weak, the ventilation is poor (the wind
magnitude often does not exceed 3 m/s) and the mixing
height is shallow, so that pollutants stagnate near the
ground. Moreover, as a consequence of the high-density
population and of the high associated anthropogenic
Fig. 1. Campania region topography. Contour lines are at 0, 100,
500, 1500 and 2000 m.
emissions, concentrations of atmospheric pollutants
often exceed the Italian air quality standards. For
example, the city of Naples, with a population density
of about 9000 inh./km2 downtown, and about 3000
inh./km2 in the suburbs, is characterized by a constant
presence of photochemical smog during the summer
months, especially on days with atmospheric stagnant
conditions, while during the winter months it is charac-
terized by high concentrations of primary pollutants
(particularly NOx). Moreover, in the last three decades,
many urban centers were included in the urban area of
Naples, so that presently a unique large urbanized area
extends towards the north up to the city of Caserta (about
40 km inland), and towards the south-east up to the city
of Salerno. The provinces of Avellino and Benevento,
extending across the Appennini chain, have a compara-
tively lower inhabitant density. It is impressive to con-
sider that during 1995, as measured from MARC, the
NO2 concentration exceeded the 1-h average level of 200
µg/m3 approximately 800 times, the CO concentration
exceeded the level of 15 mg/m3 approximately 40 times,
and the O3 concentration exceeded the level of 180
µg/m3 65 times, in the urban area of Naples. This means
that during the winter and most of the summer, both
primary and secondary air pollutants did not comply
with the Italian air quality standards.
3. A short description of PNAM
3.1. Mathematical model
PNAM is based on an Eulerian approach, i.e. the air
pollution dynamics is modelled by the following system
of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations:
∂ci
⫽⫺ⵜ·(uci)⫹ⵜ·(K·ⵜci)⫹Ri(z, t, c)⫹Di(x, t, ci) (1)
∂t
⫹Ei(x, t) i⫽1, …, n
where c=(c1, …, cn) is the vector of the concentrations
of n chemical species, u is the wind velocity field, K is
the turbulent diffusion tensor, Ri, Di and Ei are the reac-
tion, dry deposition and emission terms, respectively,
and x=(x, y, z).
The solution of these equations is decoupled from that
of the Navier–Stokes equations, i.e. any dependence of
the turbulent diffusion tensor and of the radiative proper-
ties of the atmosphere on the chemical processes is neg-
lected.
The chemistry and dry deposition modules have been
extracted from the cit photochemical model (Harley et
al., 1993; McRae et al., 1982). The present chemical
module is based on the LCC/SAPRC mechanism (Harley
et al., 1993; Lurmann et al., 1987), involving 42 species
and 107 gas-phase chemical reactions. The dry depo-
 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511
sition is computed using a three-layer resistance scheme,
to account for the transport through the boundary layer
and the laminar sublayer and for pollutant–surface inter-
actions. For more details see Harley et al. (1993), Lurm-
ann et al. (1987) and McRae et al. (1982) and the refer-
ences therein.
3.2. Numerical methods
The governing equations (1) are discretized on a three-
dimensional grid. The grid spacings are uniform in both
horizontal directions, while they are non-uniform in the
vertical direction, to better resolve near-surface gradi-
ents; a σ terrain-influenced coordinate transformation is
used in the vertical direction. The grid is an Arakawa
C-grid, with wind velocities defined at cell-face centers
and concentrations at cell centers.
A symmetric time-splitting is applied to (1), which
decouples advection from diffusion and chemistry, i.e.
cn+1⫽T ⌬t/2 ⌬t ⌬t/2 n
A T DCT A c (2)
where TA and TDC are the advection and the coupled
diffusion-chemistry operators, respectively, and n is the
current time level (the index i in cni has been dropped
for convenience). The former operator is treated
explicitly, while the latter implicitly.
The advective transport is solved using the method of
lines. A third-order positive upwind method with flux
limiters is applied in the horizontal direction (for more
details see Hundsdorfer et al., 1995), and a first-order
upwind in the vertical direction. A second-order Runge–
Kutta (Heun) method is used to solve the system of
ODEs arising from the semidiscretization of the advec-
tive transport. The lateral boundary conditions for the
advection steps depend on the flow direction: in the case
of inflow a constant extrapolation is used; in the case of
outflow they are determined using a second-order extra-
polation, clipped to avoid negative concentrations. The
use of the constant extrapolation in the case of inflow
has been mainly motivated by the need for avoiding new
extrema in the solution, due to the extrapolation (van
Loon, 1995). A zero-gradient boundary condition is
applied at the top of the modeling domain, while a zero-
flux boundary condition is applied at the bottom, where
the velocities are equal to zero (the first vertical level,
plus the displacement height and the surface roughness
length, matches the terrain height).
The vertical diffusion and chemistry are treated
implicitly. The diffusion term is previously discretized
by a second-order centered finite-difference scheme, so
that the diffusion-chemistry equation assumes the form
d at sunrise and deactivate at sunset, thus changing the
c ⫽F (c)⫽Dk(z, c)⫹R(ck), 1ⱕkⱕM (3)
dt k k
where c is the complete concentration grid vector along
a vertical column, ck is the concentration vector at the
505
kth vertical grid point, Dk is the discretized diffusion
operator and M is the total number of grid points in the
vertical direction. The following boundary condition is
applied at the ground level:
∂c
⫺Kzz ⫽E⫺vgc (4)
∂z
where Kzz is the vertical turbulent diffusivity and vg is
the dry deposition velocity. A zero-gradient boundary
condition is applied at the top of the computational
domain.
The integration of system (3) accounts for a large part
of the computational work in an air quality simulation,
thus requiring effective numerical methods and software.
We use a modified version of the VODE package, which
solves stiff ODEs using BDF formulas. To fully exploit
the sparsity of the linear systems arising from the appli-
cation of modified Newton iterations, we apply an iterat-
ive method, based on a block-Jacobi relaxations. We also
use the kinetic pre-processor (KPP) tool (Damian-Iorda-
che and Sandu, 1995) to minimize the fill-in arising from
the LU factorization of subblocks of the Jacobian matrix,
and to generate efficient code that performs the corre-
sponding forward and backward substitutions. Details
are given in Barone et al. (1998b).
3.3. Parallel implementation
In PNAM the three-dimensional grid is partitioned
along the x and y directions, i.e. the domain is decom-
posed into vertical air columns, which are mapped onto
a two-dimensional logical grid of processors. This is a
natural approach in atmospheric modelling (see for
example Dabdub and Manohar, 1997; Dabdub and Sein-
feld, 1996; Elbern, 1997), since it avoids communi-
cations involving diffusion and radiation processes.
Moreover, this choice allows the use of efficient and
reliable sequential software, such as the modified VODE
package mentioned in Section 3.2, for the solution of the
vertical diffusion and chemistry operators, and nearest-
neighbor communications occur only to exchange sub-
domain boundary data during the advection steps.
Load balancing is also addressed in PNAM. An equal
partition of columns among processors generally leads
to load imbalance during the chemistry-diffusion stage,
and hence to a degradation of the parallel performance.
The main sources of load imbalance are the different
dynamic conditions in different subdomains, for
example, different emission rates from urban and rural
areas and different time steps chosen by the variable time
step chemistry solver (photochemical reactions activate
stiffness of Eq. (1)). A dynamic load balancing strategy,
similar to that used in the MM90 software (Michalakes,
1997), is implemented in PNAM. The workload measure
is based on the accumulated time per single vertical col-
506 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511
umn for solving the advection and diffusion-chemistry
operators and a global-decision/local-migration algor-
ithm is used to periodically redistribute columns among
available processors.
The Runtime System Library (RSL) (Michalakes,
1994) has been used for the parallel implementation of
PNAM. It provides high-level constructs for automatic
domain decomposition, nearest-neighbor and global
communication, dynamic remapping of work onto pro-
cessors for load balancing, and also for grid refinement
and irregularly shaped nesting. More details on the paral-
lel implementation and the dynamic load balancing strat-
egy, with performance results on an IBM SP2 machine
with 12 processors, are given in Barone et al. (1998a).
4. Application of PNAM to an air pollution episode
4.1. Case study
From a meteorological point of view, the period under
study was characterized by a high pressure weather sys-
tem and stagnant conditions. The geostrophic wind
direction, estimated from synoptic maps, was north-west
and its intensity was about 4 m/s. The intense solar radi-
ation determined an intensive photochemical activity
with a high production of ozone and other photochemical
oxidants. For these reasons, during 25–27 July 1995 the
Naples urban area experienced a photosmog episode, and
ozone concentration exceeded 150 ppb, i.e. it was well
above the attention level of 180 µg/m3 defined by the
Italian legislation.
The modeled domain extends over a volume of
384×384×2.4 km3 and was discretized using a rectangu-
lar grid with 64×64×16 cells in the x- y- and z-directions,
respectively (the inner part of this region in shown in
Fig. 1). The horizontal grid spacings were uniform and
equal to 6 km in both the x- and y-directions; vertical
level spacings ranged from ⌬z=10 m at the ground level
to ⌬z=649 m at the uppermost level. A stretching func-
tion was applied by PNAM to make the grid uniform
also in the vertical direction.
A splitting interval of 15 min was used in the simula-
tions, and meteorological data were read every hour.
4.2. Initial data setup
As it is widely known, a large amount of input data
are needed by an air quality model, such as spatially and
temporally resolved emission inventories, temperature,
humidity, mixing heights, landuse and surface roughness
fields. In the following, the most important data sources
are described.
Meteorological data (wind velocity, diffusion tensor,
Monin–Obukhov length, friction velocity, mixing height
and temperature) were generated by the Topographic
Vorticity-mode Mesoscale-β (TVM) model (Bornstein et
al., 1996; Schayes et al., 1996). It was run offline, i.e.
hourly, two- and three-dimensional fields were first gen-
erated and then supplied to PNAM. The TVM model is
three-dimensional and non-hydrostatic. It uses a σ ter-
rain-influenced coordinate system to account for topo-
graphical features, and the Navier–Stokes equations are
written in terms of vorticity. The equations are simplified
by using the incompressible and the shallow Boussinesq
approximations. TVM has already been validated and
used to simulate atmospheric circulation phenomena
(Bornstein et al., 1996; Grossi et al., 1996; Schayes et
al., 1996). In our case study, TVM used the same grid
of PNAM, but with a greater number of vertical points,
i.e. 24, up to a cumulative height of 15 km.
The roughness lengths were estimated from landuse
data, both for the meteorological and the air quality
model. The landuse field was extracted from the Italian
Army Geographic Institute (IGM) archive at an original
resolution of 250×250 m2 and mapped onto the corre-
sponding CIT categories.
Ultraviolet and total solar radiation fields, as well as
initial conditions, were estimated from the data of the
MARC database. Presently, MARC, operated by the
Campania Regional Board, automatically detects the
concentrations of various atmospheric pollutants, e.g.
SOx, NOx, O3, PAN, CO and VOCs, in the main urban
areas of the Campania region, in order to alert local auth-
orities to dangerous exceedances. Air quality data from
17 stations were available. These data were interpolated
to derive initial conditions for NOx, CO, NMHC and O3
concentrations at ground level. For MEK, ALD2 and
HCHO, the background value of 3 ppb was used. Unfor-
tunately, initial conditions at upper levels were not avail-
able; for this reason, the initial concentrations at upper
levels were calculated by linear interpolation from the
ground level concentrations and the natural background
values at the simulated maximum mixing height. To
minimize the impact of initial conditions, a startup time
of 24 h was used, i.e. the simulation started on 25 July at
0:00 LST, and only the results for 26 July were analyzed.
As it is well known, the results of an air quality simul-
ation are sensitive to the accuracy of the emission inven-
tory; moreover, a high quality inventory is compulsory
if a photochemical model has to be used for selecting
effective air pollution abatement strategies. Unfortu-
nately, an accurate and well-documented emission
inventory for the Campania region has not yet been
developed. The only available data are the annual emis-
sions from the five provinces of the Campania region for
1995 (Naples City Council, 1987). In order to spatially
and temporally resolve the available data, we used an
approach similar to that described in Ziomas et al.
(1995). The traffic daily emissions were calculated by
taking into account the typical seasonal and
weekday/weekend traffic volumes of each province
 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511 507

(Naples City Council, 1987). The daily emissions for the

weekday of the calculation, 26 July 1995, are summar-
ized in Table 1. Most of the atmospheric pollutants are
emitted from the urban area of Naples, i.e. about 40%
of NOx, 60% of CO and 60% of VOC emissions from
the Campania region are emitted from the Naples basin.
The traffic daily emissions were split into 24 hourly
emissions, proportionally to the corresponding traffic
volumes, to assign an hourly emission to each cell of
the computational grid. Hydrocarbon emissions were
distributed according to the appropriate categories for
use in the LCC chemical mechanism (Lurmann et al.,
1987), and NOx emissions were split into 90% of NO
and 10% of NO2. Biogenic emissions and emissions
from harbor and airport activities were not taken into
account; furthermore, since we considered a summer
day, emissions from civil heating were not included.
Industrial emissions were taken into account according
to available data about localization and cycles of oper-
ation.

4.3. Results

In Fig. 2 the simulated horizontal wind fields in Cam-

pania are reported at 9:00 and 15:00 LST. In the morning
hours a westerly flow is well established over the
domain, according to the background synoptic flow, and
the wind velocity is generally very weak (about 1 m/s).
During the afternoon, the difference in temperature
between land and sea results in a strengthening of the
flow. The mean wind velocity at the first computational
level (about 10 m above the ground level) is about 3.0
m/s. The hills to the north of Naples and the Vesuvio
Fig. 2. Simulated horizontal wind field at the first computational level
volcano generate a channeling effect, so that the wind (⬇10 m) at 9:00 LST (top) and 15:00 LST (bottom).
is canalized through the plain between the mountains.
Various channeling effects are also visible through the
gaps of the Appennini chain. The wind blows from the The results from the meteorological model have also
south-west over the city of Salerno, where a sea breeze been compared with available measured data, to assess
cell develops; unfortunately, no experimental data are the reliability of the computed wind field before provid-
available for this location. Further results from the ing it as input for PNAM (see, for example, Grossi et
meteorological model (data not shown) have also al., 1996, for a sensitivity study about wind field
revealed a very shallow mixing height near the coast, so predictions). In Fig. 3 simulated vs. measured wind data
that pollutants stagnate over the Naples basin during the at the first grid level are reported at five monitoring sta-
night and most of the morning. tions of the Campania region. During the night, the wind
speed is very low (⬍1 m/s) in all the locations, and is
often below the minimum threshold revealed by the
Table 1 instruments. During the early morning a shift in the wind
Daily emissions (tonn/day) of atmospheric pollutants from the Cam- direction (from westerly to southerly) is observed at the
pania provinces on 26 July 1995
Naples monitoring station, where the wind direction
NOx NMHC CO changes by about 90°; the transition between the night
and day circulation is due to the sea breeze, which
Naples 84.5 78.0 877.4 develops in the morning hours and lasts until late after-
Caserta 19.5 7.6 186.5 noon. During the whole time of simulation, the mean
Salerno 23.5 19.8 226.2
Benevento 5.8 2.4 52.2 wind direction is westerly in Ischia, Licola and Caserta
Avellino 22.7 5.5 64.0 monitoring stations (see Fig. 1 for the location of these
stations) and there is no drastic change in the wind direc-
508 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511
Fig. 3. Observed (×) and simulated (———) wind speed and direction at five locations of the Campania region.
tion, according to the mean synoptic flow. At the Benev-
ento station, the simulated wind again blows from the
west, but the wind speed is overestimated. The model
reproduces a stronger flow along the main axis of the
valley, which is not observed in the experimental data.
This finding requires more investigation; probably local
forcings affect the measured wind pattern and the coarse
horizontal grid resolution is not sufficient to resolve the
smaller scale features of the flow (Benevento is located
in the middle of the Appennini chain, where the topogra-
phy is very complex).
Among modeled species are CO, O3, NO and NO2,
for which measured air quality data are available from
the MARC monitoring network. In Figs. 4 and 5, hori-
zontal concentration isophlets at the first grid level are
shown for CO and O3, at different hours during the day
of simulation. The highest pollutant concentrations are
observed in the Naples basin, from which the majority
of pollutants are emitted.
CO can be considered as an almost inert pollutant, so
that its concentration is an ideal tracer for the transport
of the pollutant mass. During the morning hours, the
maximum CO concentration is about 5 ppm over the city
of Naples. At 12:00 and 15:00 LST the sea breeze is well
developed and the polluted air is transported towards the
north-east, through the gaps of the Appennini chain. The
lower concentrations are also due to the deeper mixing
height. At 18:00 LST the sea breeze declines and the
vertical mixing is less vigorous, hence CO is trapped in
a shallow layer close to the ground, and its concentration
begins to increase over the urban areas.
The ozone concentration pattern follows the typical
daily cycle. The concentration is negligible before sun-
rise (⬍30 ppb) because of depletion reactions, mainly
with NO. During the morning, O3 concentration begins
to increase and reaches a peak at about 12:00 LST. The
maximum concentration is about 180 ppb about 20 km
to the north of the Naples urban area. A large production
of ozone is also observed in the Salerno and Caserta
areas.
A comparison of measured O3, NO, NO2 and CO data,
in the main urban areas of the Campania region, with
 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511 509

Fig. 4. Simulated diurnal variation of surface CO concentration in the Campania region on 26 July 1995.

Fig. 5. Simulated diurnal variation of surface O3 concentration in the Campania region on 26 July 1995.

simulated results in the corresponding grid cells is shown
in Fig. 6. Unfortunately, measured O3 data are available
only from the Naples and Caserta monitoring stations.
Note that in this study a coarse horizontal resolution
(6×6 km2) was used, so that local effects cannot be
resolved, while point-wise experimental data are likely
to be affected by local influences. Taking into account
this remark, the computed results appear promising,
since they show the capability of PNAM of reproducing
the temporal and spatial patterns of measured air quality
data, although some discrepancies are evident. Let us
analyze, for example, the situation in Naples. During the
510 G. Barone et al. / Environmental Modelling & Software 15 (2000) 503–511
Fig. 6. Computed (———) and measured (· · ·) profiles of pollutant
concentrations in the Campania region on 26 July 1995.
night, the O3 concentration is lower than that observed;
PNAM predicted an almost null concentration, below the
background concentration of about 30 ppb. This undere-
stimation is probably in conjunction with the overestim-
ation of NO, which consumes O3 during the night. There
could be various explanations to this discrepancy. Dur-
ing the night, concentrations become very sensitive to
meteorological parameters, as, for example, wind speed
and mixing layer height (which are difficult to estimate
because of their very low values). Moreover, our emis-
sion inventory is affected by large uncertainties and a
small difference in the temporal and spatial allocation of
sources can cause significant differences in the concen-
trations. The peak in the O3 concentration is also missed
at the Naples monitoring station; the observed concen-
tration reaches about 150 ppb, while the computed con-
centration peak is about 100 ppb. The NO experimental
concentration shows a sharp peak at the Caserta station
in the early morning, which is probably due to local
effects. The phase and the amplitude of the NO2 and CO
predicted concentration values generally are not cor-
rectly reproduced: the NO2 morning peaks at Naples,
Benevento and Salerno monitoring stations are antici-
pated and the CO trends show a poor agreement at
Caserta, Benevento and Avellino.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, the first results are given from the appli-
cation of the Parallel Naples Airshed Model to a photo-
chemical smog episode which occurred in the Naples
basin on 26 July 1995. During this day, the advective
transport was weak, due to the prevailing synoptic con-
ditions, and the convective boundary layer near the
shoreline was very shallow (less than 500 m at about 10
km downwind of the shoreline).
The comparison between predicted and experimental
results is satisfactory, although some discrepancies are
evident, probably mainly due to fact that only the total
annual emissions were available to build the emission
inventory for NOx, CO and NMHC. The reasons for
these deviations will be analyzed in the frame of future
sensitivity studies.
Future work will also include control strategy design,
study of aerosol processes, as well as the use of nesting
techniques to improve the resolution near the urban
areas, where large gradients can develop.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank J.H. Seinfeld and D. Dab-
dub for providing the CIT airshed model, from which
the LCC chemical mechanism and the dry deposition
module were extracted.
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