CMAQ v5.5+ CRACMM Gridded Air Quality Output for Summer 2023 with and without Fires

Hourly and daily gridded surface-level predictions of air pollutants for June 2023 across the U.S. and Canada, generated using the CMAQ model version 5.5+ with CRACMM version 3 chemistry. The data includes a base simulation and a paired 'nofire' simulation where all fire emissions were turned off, allowing for impact assessment. The dataset was produced by Havala Pye and is hosted by the CMAS Center via an AWS S3 bucket.

Use Cases

• Quantify the contribution of fire emissions to ambient pollutant levels based on the paired base and nofire simulations.
• Analyze spatial patterns of air quality across the U.S. and Canada during summer 2023 using the 354x459 grid.
• Validate or benchmark other atmospheric models using the hourly average surface-level predictions.
• Study the temporal evolution of pollutants during fire events mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Provides a direct comparison of air quality with and without fire emissions through paired simulations.
• Covers a large spatial domain encompassing the contiguous U.S. and Canada.
• Offers high temporal resolution with hourly average data for June 2023.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The data had not been published in peer-reviewed literature at the time of release, as noted in the disclaimer.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

US EPA Office of Research and Development CMAQ and CRACMM models, simulations by Havala Pye.

Collection Method

Output from CMAQv5.5+ model simulations with CRACMMv3 chemistry.

Time Range

Summer 2023, with specific hourly data for June 2023.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-29 03:10:14; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States and Canada, on a grid with 354 rows and 459 columns.