Research Highlights

Towards a better understanding of how clean energy and equitable transportation solutions will impact present-day and future air quality, and public health.

September 04, 2025

The Science Objective

Our key focus is to understand air quality and hence health impacts of clean energy and equitable transport solutions

Approach

  • We are using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to simulate meteorology and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for air pollution over the West Midlands and South Wales in the UK and Great Lakes in the US. These are for a four-domain nested configuration for the UK and three-domain for the US.
  • Currently conducting sensitivity simulations to test various combinations of physical mechanisms in WRF and chemical mechanisms in CMAQ for 2019 and 2022.
  • Model outputs are being evaluated against available observations to identify the most robust configurations to simulate future meteorology and air pollution over the target region.
  • Modelled outputs from the configuration thus identified will be used to estimate the adverse health outcomes associated with extreme temperatures and air pollution exposure and examine inequalities in these.

Temperature from the four-domain nested configuration over the UK

Examining sensitivity of temperature to different combinations of physics schemes in the WRF model over the West Midlands and South Wales in the UK

Impact

  • Sensitivity analysis of various WRF schemes at an unprecedented 1 km resolution over the UK reveals that combinations effective at coarser scales (10–50 km) may not perform well at higher resolution.
  • Beyond the US- and UK-focused CLEETS test beds, we are also exploring the impact of road transportation on air pollution and public health in India.

Summary

Temperature from different WRF schemes is within the acceptable range but there is a large variability in the precipitation values that needs further investigation. Observations from UK Met Office will be used to identify the best WRF physics schemes combination before its use in CMAQ model.

Team Members

Karn Vohra (Research Fellow)

Karn Vohra (Research Fellow)

University of Birmingham

Climate Change

Sicheng Wu (Postdoc)

Sicheng Wu (Postdoc)

DPI

Climate Change

Peiyuan Li (Research Associate)

Peiyuan Li (Research Associate)

DPI

Climate Change

Abhinav Wadhwa (Postdoc)

Abhinav Wadhwa (Postdoc)

DPI

Climate Change

Rajesh Kumar (Advisor)

Rajesh Kumar (Advisor)

NSF-NCAR

Climate Change

Viral Patel (Collaborator)

Viral Patel (Collaborator)

PDEU

Climate Change

William Bloss (Advisor)

William Bloss (Advisor)

University of Birmingham

Climate Change

Ashish Sharma (Advisor)

Ashish Sharma (Advisor)

DPI

Climate Change

Publications

  1. Vohra, K. and Bloss, W.: A Comprehensive Assessment of Disparities in UK Air Pollutant Emissions, Exposure, and Health Burden to Inform Policy, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18940, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18940, 2025.
  2. Vohra, K., Wu S., Li P., Wadhwa A., Kumar R., Patel V., Bloss W. and Sharma A., Establishing a robust contemporary meteorological baseline towards decarbonising rapidly growing transportation hubs in the US and UK, SRI Congress, Chicago, US, 2025

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