Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Urban Scale Modeling Of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide And Validation Of Emission Inventories, James E. Powell, Christopher L. Butenhoff, Andrew L. Rice

Student Research Symposium

There exists a pressing need for high resolution emissions inventories for cities. For greenhouse gases, cities and regions need a careful analysis of their carbon footprint to design effective policies to control and mitigate emissions. High resolution emissions inventories can be used in conjunction with meteorology models and atmospheric measurements to place top-down constraints on emissions. High resolution emissions inventories for criteria pollutants like NO_x, CO, and O₃ enable urban-scale air pollution modeling down to the neighborhood level. For example, the Vulcan project estimates CO₂ using county-scale vehicle miles traveled (VMT) from the National Mobile Inventory …