Urban airshed modeling of the Middle Tennessee modeling domain: model performance evaluation

The Nashville Metropolitan Area has been designated as a moderate ozone nonattainment area by the U.S. EPA for failing to meet O₃ NAAQS standards in the 1980s. As part of the required reattainment process, the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee has been contracted to perform photochemical modeling runs of ozone formation in the Middle Tennessee Modeling Domain. Validation runs of four meteorological episodes that occurred in 1988 are being performed with the use of the Urban Airshed Model to show applicability of the UAM in showing acceptable performance by EPA criteria. The model performance evaluation must satisfy this criteria before future year attainment demonstrations for selected episodes in 1996 will be accepted as demonstrating compliance. This master's thesis presents an analysis of the findings from the 1988 UAM validation runs along with a detailed discussion of the mixing height, regiontop, windfield and other inputs for the UAM model.