RPO Monitoring Issues by Marc Pitchford Ph D

RPO Monitoring Issues by Marc Pitchford, Ph. D. WRAP Ambient Monitoring & Reporting Forum Co-chair

RPO Monitoring & Data Analysis Activities • Assess data adequacy & supplement if needed – FCIA routine aerosol speciation data for tracking trends (IMPROVE) – Non-FCIA aerosol speciation data for spatial coverage (IMPROVE protocol, Speciation Trends, etc) – Intensive air quality & met. monitoring for model input & validation

RPO Monitoring & Data Analysis Activities (continued) • Data archival & communications – Available databases (IMPROVE, AIRS, NWS) – Approaches (catalog, link, ingest, etc. ) – Data validation & documentation

RPO Monitoring & Data Analysis Activities (continued) • Data assessments – Descriptive (statistical & graphical summaries) – Relational (correlation, scatter plots, etc) – Consistency & closure (fine mass, optical, & extinction budgets – Trends (official Haze Rule trends, major aerosol components & precursors, & met. ) – Source apportionment (receptor models using composition, spatial/temporal patterns, & trajectories) – Regional air quality model validation (average, best & worst days) – Refinement of natural haze levels

RPO Monitoring & Data Analysis Activities (continued) • Reporting – Routine data reports – Interpretive reports on causes of haze – Format, timing, & frequency of reports to meet RPO, state, & tribal needs

RPO Monitoring Issues of Common Interest • What source apportionment methods should be used? • What role do the RPOs, states, tribes, etc have with respect to reporting data to EPA? • Which trajectory methods & uses of trajectory analysis seem best? • How do we demonstrate progress, show interstate impacts & estimate natural levels?

RPO Monitoring Over-Arching Issues • Opportunities for common &/or compatible – Monitoring systems – Data set & databases – Assessment tools • Requirement for & approaches to conduct cross-RPO-border data assessments

RPO Monitoring Over-Arching Issues • Coordinated requests to mitigate national-scale monitoring deficiencies --- examples – Long-term need for a national network of radar wind profilers to improve modeling performance – Routine quantitative estimates of dust & smoke from outside of the US by a system of satellite remote sensing, dispersion modeling, & surface observations • Methods for continued inter-RPO communications