Modeling Regional Pollution Transport Events During KORUS-AQ: Progress and Challenges in Improving Representation of Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks

This study evaluates the impact of assimilating soil moisture data from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) on short-term regional weather and air quality modeling in East Asia during the Korea-US Air Quality Study (KORUS-AQ) airborne campaign. SMAP data are assimilated into the Noah land surface model using an ensemble Kalman filter approach in the Land Information System framework, which is semi-coupled with the NASA-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting model with online chemistry (NUWRF-Chem). With SMAP assimilation included, water vapor and carbon monoxide (CO) transport from northern-central China transitional climate zones to South Korea is better represented in NUWRF-Chem during two studied pollution events. Influenced by different synoptic conditions and emission patterns, impact of SMAP assimilation on modeled CO in South Korea is intense (>30 ppbv) during one event and less significant (