Quantitative Assessment of Parametric Uncertainty in Northern Hemisphere PAH Concentrations.

ABSTRACT: We quantitatively examine the relative importance of uncertainty in emissions and physicochemical properties (including reaction rate constants) to Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Arctic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations, using a computationally efficient numerical uncertainty technique applied to the global-scale chemical transport model GEOS-Chem. Using polynomial chaos (PC) methods, we propagate uncertainties in physicochemical properties and emissions for the PAHs benzo[a]pyrene, pyrene and phenanthrene to simulated spatially resolved concentration uncertainties. We find that the leading contributors to parametric uncertainty in simulated concentrations are the black carbon-air partition coefficient and oxidation rate constant for benzo[a]pyrene, and the oxidation rate

SUBMITTER: Thackray CP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4786340 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature