Relationships between primary emissions and regional air quality and acid deposition in Eulerian models determined by sensitivity analysis

The relationships between sources, regional air quality and acid deposition are investigated by the use of the sensitivity analysis. A computationally efficient method of calculating sensitivity coefficients is discussed and used to determine source-receptor relations. These techniques are demonstrated using a simplified version of the Sulfate Transport Eulerian Model. The sensitivity analysis is also extended to calculate sensitivities of an objective function by algebraic manipulations of the sensitivity coefficients. The sensitivity coefficients of primary and secondary pollutants with respect to a specific emission are used to study the role of sources in regional air quality. The domain of influence of a source and the maximum value of the response of a receptor region show strong diurnal variations. The source-receptor relations sought by sensitivity analysis show that the ground level sulfate concentration at the receptor region is mainly affected by close-by SO₂ sources during day time and by far-away SO₂ sources during night time. It is also demonstrated that the fate of pollutants emitted in the model region can be found by calculating the sensitivity coefficients of the appropriate objective functions.