Impact assessment of biomass burning in Southeast Asia to 2019 annual average PM2.5 concentration in Thailand using atmospheric chemical transport model

Abstract

Agricultural residues burning as a means of land preparation commonly practiced in many Southeast Asian countries causes significant deterioration of ambient air quality and public health. In this study, WRF-CMAQ Atmospheric Chemical Transport Model was used to conduct a year-round simulation (1 January - 31 December 2019) of PM2.5 spatio-temporal variation over Southeast Asia. The model utilized the Fire emission Inventory from NCAR (FINNv1.5) from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) as a biomass burning emission input. The model performance was evaluated by comparing simulated values with observed values from monitoring stations in nine major cities. The model shows acceptable performance reproducing the PM2.5 concentration with 14.9% normalized mean bias (NMB) and correlation coefficient of 0.89. After that, the simulation was conducted again with emission from FINNv1.5 turned off. The results from FINNv1.5 on and off cases were then compared to evaluate contribution of biomass burning to PM2.5 concentration in two major cities of Thailand: Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The comparison shows that biomass burning contributes to 49.1% and 13.1% of PM2.5 annual average concentration in Chiang Mai and Bangkok respectively with highest month being April for Chiang Mai (70.7% contribution) and March for Bangkok (35.5% contribution).