ABSTRACT
Particulate matter with a diameter of less than 10 μm (PM10) is one of the most important pollutants that is released from both anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions. Particularly, biomass burning in the dry season of Southeast Asia is a huge emission source of PM10. In this study, we apply the coupled regional atmospheric model Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and air quality trajectory model HYSPLIT to reveal the source contribution of PM10 in upper Southeast Asia and neighboring regions in March 2012. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) were used as anthropogenic and biomass burning emission input data. First, the model capability was judged by evaluation with the dataset from the Pollution Control Department (PCD) using statistical tests, i.e., Index of Agreement (IOA) and Fractional Bias (FB). The model results showed acceptable performance to simulate PM10 and the related meteorological condition (i.e., R = 0.6–0.8, IOA = 0.7–0.8, NMSE = 0.01–0.5, FB = 0.2–1.8). The model results show that the biomass burning was responsible for PM10 concentration by about 56%, while anthropogenic emissions were responsible for about 44%.
