MOVES is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)
Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (OTAQ, 2009, also available at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/models/moves/index.htm
and). The purpose of MOVES is to provide an accurate estimate of emissions from
mobile sources under a wide range of user-defined conditions. It helps the user
answer "what if" questions, such as "How would particulate
matter emissions decrease in my state on a typical weekday if truck travel were
reduced during rush hour?", or "How does the total hydrocarbon
emission rate change if my fleet switches to gasoline from diesel fuel?"
In the modeling process, the user specifies vehicle types,
time periods, geographical areas, pollutants, vehicle operating
characteristics, and road types to be modeled. The model then performs a series
of calculations, which have been carefully developed to accurately reflect
vehicle operating processes (such as cold start or extended idle) and provide
estimates of bulk emissions or emission rates. Specifying the characteristics
of the particular scenario to be modeled is done by creating a Run
Specification, or runspec (discussed further in Section 3).
The outputs from MOVES are emissions estimates or emissions
factors. These can be used as inputs to larger emissions modeling systems that
model many different types of emissions (e.g., stationary point sources, area
sources and biogenic sources) and provide results that are used in performing
air quality modeling. An example of such systems is the Sparse Matrix Operator
Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) model, which is widely used in both the public and
private sectors (IE, 2009a). Detailed information about SMOKE is available at http://www.smoke-model.org.
In December 2009, a new version of MOVES was released: the
Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator 2010
model (MOVES2010). An important feature of MOVES2010 is that it allows users to
choose between (1) the “Inventory” calculation type, which provides emission
rates in terms of total quantity of emissions for a given time period; and (2) the
“Emission Rate” calculation type, which gives emission rates in terms of grams/mile
or grams/vehicle/hour. For large-scale emissions modeling such as that needed
for regional- and national-scale air quality modeling projects, it is desirable
to use the Emission Rate calculation type, which populates emission rate lookup
tables that can then be applied to many times and places, thus reducing the
total number of MOVES runs required.
Under Work Assignment (WA) 3-03 of EPA contract EP-D-07-102
to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), EPA’s Office of
Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ) has tasked UNC and ENVIRON with
developing tools to facilitate the process of using MOVES to create emissions
estimates appropriate for air quality modeling.
The successful use
of the MOVES Emission Rate calculation type requires careful planning and a
clear understanding of emission rates calculation in MOVES. To reduce the time
and effort required of the user for this process, and to help the user obtain
more accurate modeling results, UNC and ENVIRON created a new tool called the SMOKE-MOVES
integration tool (Figure 1). This tool consists of a set of scripts that
automate the proper use of the Emission Rate calculations for the purpose of
estimating mobile-source emissions for air quality (AQ) modeling. The
SMOKE-MOVES tool provides three major functions:
1.
Meteorological data preprocessor:
·
The
meteorological data preprocessor program (Met4moves) prepares spatially and
temporally averaged temperatures and relative humidity data to set up the
meteorological input conditions for MOVES and SMOKE using the Meteorology-Chemistry
Interface Processor (MCIP) output files.
2. MOVES
model processing:
·
The
MOVES driver script creates data importer files and the MOVES input file
(runspec), which specifies the
characteristics of the particular scenario to be modeled.
·
The MOVES
postprocessing script formats the MOVES emission rate lookup tables for
SMOKE.
3. SMOKE
model processing:
·
The SMOKE postprocessing program (Movesmrg)
estimates emissions from on-road mobile sources based on MOVES-based emission rate
lookup tables and meteorology data from Met4moves.
·
Creates hourly gridded speciated air quality
model-ready input files.
·
Produces various types of reports for users.
This user’s guide
describes the major functions of the SMOKE-MOVES integration tool.
Figure 1. Flow diagram of
overall SMOKE-MOVES integration tool.
Before we provide more information about the tool, this
section discusses some key concepts and terminology that will help users in understanding
this document.
Reference county – The approach for
running MOVES for SMOKE relies on the concept of reference counties. These are
counties that are used during the
creation and use of emission rates to represent a set of similar counties
(i.e., inventory counties) called a county
group. The purpose of the reference county is to reduce the computational
burden of running MOVES on every county in your modeling domain. By using a
reference county, the user generates key emission rates for the single county
in MOVES and then utilizes these factors to estimate emissions for all counties
in the county group through SMOKE. The reference county is modeled at a range
of speeds and temperatures to produce emission rate lookup tables (grams/mile
or grams/vehicle/hour, depending on mobile emission process). The variables
that are assumed to be constant across the county group members (and the
reference county) are fuel parameters, fleet age distribution and
inspection/maintenance (I/M) programs. The variables that can vary within the
county group are vehicle miles traveled (VMT), source type vehicle population,
roadway speed, and grid cell temperatures. Determining the reference counties
and their respective county groups is a key aspect of utilizing the SMOKE-MOVES
tool. It is ideal for the user to create each county group based on the
similarity between the county characteristics (e.g., urban and rural) and the
meteorological conditions (e.g., temperature and relative humidity). The user
should avoid grouping counties that have significantly different meteorological
conditions.
Fuel month – The concept of a fuel month is used to indicate when a
particular set of fuel properties should be used in a MOVES simulation. Similar
to the reference county, the fuel month reduces the computational time of MOVES
by using a single month to represent a set of months. To determine the fuel
month and which months it corresponds to, the user should review the
State-provided fuel supply data in the MOVES database for each reference
county. If the fuel supply data change throughout the year, then group the
months by fuel parameters. For example, if the grams/mile exhaust emission
rates in January are identical to February’s rates for a given reference
county, then use a single fuel month to represent January and February. In
other words, only one of the months needs to be modeled through MOVES.
When the MOVES model runs as a part of the SMOKE-MOVES tool,
it runs for all emissions processes (or modes), including on-road and
off-network emissions processes, for the selected pollutants. Off-network
emission processes (e.g., parked engine-off, engine starts, and idling, and
fuel vapor venting) in MOVES are hour-dependent due to vehicle activity
assumptions built into the MOVES model; the emission rate depends on both hour
of the day and temperature. On-roadway emission processes (e.g., running
exhaust, crankcase running exhaust, brake wear, tire wear, and on-road
evaporative), on the other hand, do not depend on hour. In MOVES, these
emission processes are categorized into three major groups:
- rate-per-distance (RPD) – The emission rate of vehicles on-network (i.e., driving) from MOVES.
The rate is expressed in grams/mile traveled.
- rate-per-vehicle (RPV) – The
emission rate of vehicles off-network (e.g., idling, starts, refueling,
parked) from MOVES. The rate is given in grams/vehicle/hour.
- rate-per-profile (RPP) – The
emission rate of vehicles off-network—specifically, the evaporation from
parked vehicles (vapor-venting emissions) from MOVES. The rate is
expressed in grams/vehicle/hour.
This SMOKE-MOVES integration tool user’s
guide assumes that readers have some experiences using both the MOVES model and
the SMOKE model; this type of knowledge is necessary for effective use of the
SMOKE-MOVES tool. For detailed information about these models, please check
their user’s guides (OTAQ, 2009; IE, 2009a).
Met4moves is a meteorological preprocessor that prepares
temperature and relative humidity (RH) data for use by both MOVES and SMOKE
(see Figure 2). Met4moves produces specific meteorological metrics for the
reference county(s) for MOVES and additional meteorological metrics for all
inventory counties in the county group for SMOKE. The meteorological metrics
are specific to the emissions processes (RPD, RPV, or RPP); this is discussed
in more detail below.
The inputs for Met4moves include the reference county
cross-reference file (MCXREF), the reference county fuel month cross-reference
file (MFMREF) for mapping reference counties to fuels and months, spatial
surrogates used to identify grid cells per county (SRGLIST), a list of counties
(COSTCY), the grid description (GRIDDESC), and gridded hourly temperatures
output from MCIP (ORD, 2009). More information about the inputs for Met4moves
is available in Section 2.3.1.
The outputs are (1) a file for MOVES that contains the
temperatures and RH for each reference county, and (2) a file for SMOKE that
contains the temperatures and RH for each inventory county in the county
group(s), supplementing the gridded hourly temperatures from MCIP. More
specifically:
·
For MOVES, Met4moves creates datasets that
provide all minimum/maximum (min/max) temperature combinations for a reference
county, reflecting all min/max combinations for all inventory counties in that
county group. The associated RH values are also included in these datasets. In
addition, the datasets include the 24-hour diurnal profiles needed for the RPP emission
process, and contain user-specified temperature increments for use by MOVES.
This is discussed in more detail at Section 2.3.3.1.
·
For SMOKE, Met4moves creates datasets that
contain the min/max temperatures, and averaged RH associated for each inventory
county. More detailed information is available in Section 2.3.3.2.
The key difference between the datasets provided to MOVES
and those provided to SMOKE is that the former includes only the reference
counties, while the latter includes all of the inventory counties.
Figure 2. Flow diagram of
Met4moves
As described in Section 1.1.1, the SMOKE-MOVES approach is based on reference counties, each one
representing a county group that shares the same fuel parameters, fleet age
distribution, I/M programs, and meteorological conditions. The use of reference
counties allows reductions in the MOVES processing time and in the sizes
of the emission rate lookup tables.
The reference county cross-reference
file (MCXREF) defines the reference
counties, and the county group that maps to each reference county. Table 1
provides the format for this input file, while Table 2 gives an example of
reference county cross-reference file entries (both of these tables are shown
later in Section 2.3.1.4).
2.1.3
Spatial Averaging Method for Temperature and
RH Data
In order to combine gridded meteorology data with
county-based mobile emissions data, a technique has been developed for
calculating spatially averaged meteorology for each reference county. Because
not all of the grid cells in a county contain on-road mobile emissions, this
technique provides a way to select which cells should be used in determining
the min/max temperatures and 24-hour temperature profiles. Spatial surrogates
(see IE, 2009b) are used to select grid cells in each county group where the
mobile emissions are located. Based on the definitions of reference counties
and county groups, and the specific spatial surrogates, Met4moves selects the
appropriate meteorology grid cells across the county groups. It uses the
temperatures in the selected grid cells to create the temperature input files
for both the MOVES model (using a process described in Section 3) and the SMOKE
model (using a process described in Section 4). Details of defining a subset of
county grid cells for MOVES modeling include the following:
·
The user must specify at least one spatial
surrogate for Met4moves processing.
·
Using more than one surrogate could provide a
proxy for grid cells with higher mobile emission activities.
·
To select all grid cells within the county, the
user could select a total land area surrogate.
·
The grid cells selected will likely vary
depending on the choice of spatial surrogate(s).
·
Only the selected grid cells are used to
estimate the min/max temperatures and 24-hour temperature profiles.
·
When selecting the absolute min/max temperatures
in any hour that are needed for the reference county, Met4moves considers all
the selected grid cells in the reference county and all the selected grid cells
from inventory counties in the county group. This approach is needed because
the reference county could have a smaller temperature range than one of the
counties that is mapped to it. The absolute min/max temperatures are used for
computing RPD and RPV emissions processes.
·
When calculating the diurnal temperature 24-hour
profiles for the reference county, Met4moves considers all the selected grid
cells in the reference county and all the selected grid cells from inventory
counties in the county group. This approach is needed because the reference
county could have a smaller temperature range than one of the counties that is
mapped to it. The 24-hour diurnal shape profiles are used for computing various
24-hour diurnal profiles based on min/max temperature combinations for the RPP
emissions process.
Met4moves uses hourly min/max temperatures and averaged RH
over the spatial region that includes all of the inventory counties in a county
group over the user-defined modeling period. The current version of Met4moves
supports only the monthly averaging method (versus daily or episodic) to create
min/max temperatures and averaged RH for all inventory counties in the county
group(s). This means, for example,
that if you process an entire year using the monthly averaging method, then
Met4moves will produce 12 calendar months of min/max temperatures and averaged
RH for all of the inventory counties in the county group for SMOKE.
When computing RH, Met4moves defaults to using only the
hours from 6 AM through 6 PM, in order to exclude hours with little traffic
that would artificially skew the values. Users can override the default and
change the hours of the day to use for this calculation, if desired. Detailed
information for this setting is available in Section 2.3.2.
As described in Section 1.1.1, the concept of a fuel month
is used to indicate when a particular set of fuel properties should be used in
a MOVES simulation. To group months by fuel properties, the user must create and input a fuel month file
(MFMREF) to Met4moves. The fuel month file is a text file that contains
reference county FIPS codes, monthly fuel type identification (ID) codes, and
the months that use each fuel type (Tables 3 and 4, shown later in Section
2.3.1.5). If a fuel month file
containing more than one fuel month entry is provided to Met4moves, fuel-month-specific
temperature outputs will be created for the MOVES model. For example, if a
reference county has four fuel months representing the entire year with the
monthly averaging method, then Met4moves will produce four sets of temperatures
and averaged RH outputs for the reference county, as opposed to 12 calendar
months of outputs for the county group. The outputs for the reference county
are used as input to the MOVES driver script (Section 3), while the outputs for
the county group are used as input for SMOKE processing (Section 4).
Temperature increments are used by MOVES to determine the
number of emission rates needed in the various lookup tables. The user can
define three different temperature increments, which control the RPD, RPV, and
RPP emissions processes, respectively. MOVES will calculate emission rates at
the various temperatures (determined by the temperature increment) and bounded
by the range of absolute min/max temperatures. This provides some control over
the number of MOVES runs. Note that all temperatures produced by Met4moves are
in ºF.
Examples: If the
absolute min/max for an averaging period and reference county is 68/94 ºF,
the temperatures associated with the RPD, RPV, and RPP calculations are as
follows:
a. For
RPD, a temperature increment of 5 ºF would require emission rates at all
temperature from 65 ºF to 95 ºF in 5º increments.
b. For
RPV, a temperature increment of 10 ºF would require emission rates for each
hour at 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 ºF. (Note that these are needed for each hour
because RPV depends on hour of day as well as temperature.)
c. For
RPP, with a temperature increment of 10 ºF, Met4moves will create a set of
24-hour temperature profiles based on the normalized 24-hour shape profile.
This set of profiles will cover all combinations of min/max values within the
absolute min/max range. In this example, the set of profiles (min, max) are:
(60, 100), (70, 100), (80, 100), (90, 100), (100,100), (60, 90), (70, 90), (80,
90), (90,90), (60, 80), (70, 80), (80,80), (60, 70), (70,70), and (60, 60) ºF.
2.2 Met4moves
Processing
Using the specified county groups and temporal averaging
approach for temperature and RH data (Section 2.1.4), Met4moves determines the
min/max grid cell temperatures and associated RH for both SMOKE and MOVES, and
computes average 24-hour temperature profiles for use in MOVES.
The 24-hour temperature profiles are averaged over a
user-specified time period and grid cells for the reference county. Each
profile is assigned to a profile ID code that identifies the combination of
minimum and maximum temperatures. Note that there could be several temperature
profile IDs used by the MOVES driver scripts (discussed in Section 3) for a
single iteration of MOVES.
2.2.2
Met4moves Processing Sequence
Met4moves must be run on a Linux / Unix computer after
running MCIP and before running MOVES and SMOKE.
The following are the major processing steps that Met4moves
performs:
1. Read
the reference county cross-reference file (MCXREF) that contains a list of
reference counties and the county groups that map to those reference counties.
2. Read
the surrogate description file (SRGDESC) and a list of associated spatial
surrogate(s) chosen for use in selecting grid cells.
3. Determine
a list of grid cells for each county. Only the selected grid cells are used to
estimate the min/max temperatures, 24-hour temperature profiles, and RH over
the user-specified modeling period.
4. Set the dates of the modeling episode in local time using
the flags STDATE and ENDATE.
5. Determine
the averaging method (AVERAGING_METHOD)
chosen by the user to create 24-hour temperature profiles (i.e., MONTHLY).
6. Determine the fuel month for the reference
county using the MFMREF input file.
7. Read
the country/state/county (COSTCY) file to define the time zones for county
groups.
8. Read
the meteorology data that have been processed by MCIP.
9. Calculate
the min/max temperatures hourly and over the modeling period.
10. Calculate
average RH for the specified hour range over the modeling period. The default
hour range is from 6 AM to 6 PM local time).
11. Once
min/max temperatures and averaged RH are estimated for all reference counties
and all inventory counties in the county groups, estimate diurnal 24-hour
temperature profiles for use by the MOVES driver script (Section 3). The result
is a normalized 24-hour shape profile over the user-specified period or fuel
month.
2.3 Files
and Environment Variables for Met4moves
Met4moves requires several input files (Figure 3). This
includes the reference county cross-reference file (MCXREF), the reference
county fuel month cross-reference file (MFMREF) for mapping reference counties
to fuels and months, spatial surrogates used to identify grid cells per county
(SRGLIST), a list of counties (COSTCY), the grid description (GRIDDESC), and
gridded hourly temperatures MCIP output.
Figure 3. A flow diagram of
Met4moves input and output files.
2.3.1.1 GRIDDESC: Grid Description File
The GRIDDESC input file describes the modeling grid. See
the SMOKE user’s manual (http://www.smoke-model.org)
for details.
2.3.1.2 SRGDESC: Surrogate Description File
The SRGDESC input file includes a surrogate list,
description, and surrogate file name used in the modeling grid. Note: The user
must set SRGPRO_PATH to define the location of the spatial surrogate
coefficient file(s). See the SMOKE user’s manual for details.
2.3.1.3 METLIST:
Spatial Surrogate File
The METLIST input file contains a list of MCIP meteorology
files, including their full paths.
2.3.1.4 MCXREF: Reference county cross-reference File
The MCXREF input
file defines the reference counties, and the county group that maps to
each reference county. In defining the reference counties and county groups,
the following guiding principles should be taken into account:
·
The members of the county group should have the
same fuel characteristics, the same distribution of fuels over the year, the
same I/M programs, and the same fleet age distribution.
·
Since RH is averaged over a county group,
grouping counties with reasonably similar daytime RH is advisable.
·
Since min/max temperature and diurnal
temperature profiles are calculated over a county group, grouping counties with
reasonably similar temperature ranges is advisable. Optionally, the shape of
the diurnal temperature distribution can be considered for defining county
groups. The shape of the diurnal temperature profile is created based on
intersections with all inventory counties in the county group.
·
Optionally, the ratio of VMT to vehicle
population can be considered in the definition of county groups, since the
ratio affects the off-network emissions factors. This could be a minor factor
in the county grouping, but it would be incomplete not to mention it.
The MCXREF
file is a comma-separated-values (CSV) file. Table 1 provides the file format,
and Table 2 gives an example set of entries for this file. The user can either
include or exclude leading zeroes. For example, California could be represented
by ‘06’ or ‘6’.
Table 1. Format of reference county cross-reference
file (MCXREF)
|
Line
|
Col
|
Description
|
|
1+
|
A
|
One-digit country FIPS code for inventory county (Integer)
|
|
|
B
|
Two-digit state FIPS code for inventory county (Integer)
|
|
|
C
|
Three-digit
county FIPS code for inventory county (Integer)
|
|
|
D
|
One-digit country FIPS code for reference county (Integer)
|
|
|
E
|
Two-digit state FIPS code for reference county (Integer)
|
|
|
F
|
Three-digit
county FIPS code for reference county (Integer)
|
Table 2. Example of
reference county cross-reference file entries
|
County Groups
|
Reference Counties
|
|
Country
|
State
|
County
|
Country
|
State
|
County
|
|
0
|
13
|
101
|
0
|
|
121
|
|
0
|
13
|
102
|
0
|
13
|
121
|
|
0
|
13
|
103
|
0
|
13
|
121
|
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
|
0
|
13
|
121
|
0
|
13
|
121
|
|
0
|
13
|
123
|
0
|
13
|
217
|
|
0
|
13
|
125
|
0
|
13
|
217
|
|
0
|
13
|
127
|
0
|
13
|
217
|
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
…
|
2.3.1.5 MFMREF:
Reference County Fuel Month File
The MFMREF input
file serves the purpose of grouping months of the year by fuel
parameters. The file specifies representative fuel months (the fuelMonth field in
the MOVES database) to assign to the calendar months being simulated (the Month
field) for each reference county.
As with MCXREF,
MFMREF is a CSV file. Table 3 provides the file format. Table 4 is an example
that illustrates a situation in which there are three fuel formulations in a
given calendar year to be modeled in SMOKE-MOVES. In this example, reference
county 13121 uses the fuel formulation mix in January (1) for modeling months November
(11), December (12), January (1) and February (2). The April (4) fuel
formulation mix is used for March (3), April (4), and May (5). The June (6)
fuel formulation mix is used for simulating June (6), July (7), August (8),
September (9), and October (10). The user can either include or exclude leading
zeros for the country codes; for example, USA country code ‘0’ could be
excluded.
Table 3. Format of reference county fuel month file
(MFMREF)
|
Line
|
Position
|
Description
|
|
1+
|
A
|
Six-digit county-specific code for reference county
(Integer)
|
|
|
fuelMonth
|
Reference county fuel month (Integer)
|
|
|
Month
|
Month
(Integer)
|
Table 4. Example of reference county fuel month
file entries
|
RefCounty
|
fuelMonth
|
Month
|
|
013121
|
1
|
1
|
|
013121
|
1
|
2
|
|
13121
|
4
|
3
|
|
13121
|
4
|
4
|
|
13121
|
4
|
5
|
|
13121
|
6
|
6
|
|
13121
|
6
|
7
|
|
13121
|
6
|
8
|
|
13121
|
6
|
9
|
|
13121
|
6
|
10
|
|
13121
|
1
|
11
|
|
13121
|
1
|
12
|
Environment variables are used to provide settings to
Met4moves that control the functioning of the program. These settings are
below.
·
STDATE: [default: 0]
Sets the
overall episode start date; Julian format (YYYYDDD).
·
ENDATE: [default: 0]
Sets the
overall episode end date; Julian format (YYYYDDD).
·
AVERAGING_METHOD:
[default: MONTHLY]
Sets
averaging method to create 24-hour temperature profiles based on STDATE and ENDATE
o
MONTHLY: Average
data and profiles for each month within the user-specified modeling episode.
MONTHLY is the only allowable method at this time.
·
MOVES_OUTFILE:
[default: none]
Defines the output filename for MOVES.
·
SMOKE_OUTFILE:
[default: none]
Defines the output filename for SMOKE.
·
PD_TEMP_INCREMENT:
[default: 5]
Defines the temperature increment (in
ºF) for RPD lookup table (described in Section 3.1.1.2) to create combinations
of min/max temperature bins.
·
PV_TEMP_INCREMENT:
[default: 5]
Defines the temperature increment (in
ºF) for RPV lookup table (described in Section 3.1.1.2) to create combinations
of min/max temperature bins.
·
PP_TEMP_INCREMENT:
[default: 10]
Defines the temperature increment (in
ºF) for RPP lookup table (described in Section 3.1.1.2) to create combinations
of min/max temperature bins for normalized 24-hour diurnal temperature profile.
·
RH_STR_HOUR:
[default: 60000]
Defines the start hour in local time for
average RH over the user-specified modeling episode.
·
RH_END_HOUR:
[default: 180000]
Defines the end hour in local time for
average RH over the user-specified modeling episode.
·
SRG_LIST:
[default: none]
Specifies the name(s) of the spatial
surrogate(s) to be used in selecting the grid cells for the county (example:
setenv SRG_LIST ‘100, 230’).
·
SRGPRO_PATH:
[default: none]
Defines the location of spatial
surrogate coefficient files.
·
TMPVNAME:
[default: TEMP2]
Specifies the variable name for the
temperature to extract from MCIP files.
Met4moves produces two output files (Figure 3). The main
difference between the output files is that the output file created for input
to the MOVES driver script (Section 3) includes data for the reference counties
only, while the output file created for input to SMOKE includes data for all of
the counties within the modeling domain.
2.3.3.1
MOVES_OUTFILE: Output File for MOVES Driver
Script
The
output file created for use by the MOVES driver script contains the absolute
minimum and maximum temperatures and average RH values associated with each
reference county. The scope of these min/max temperatures extends across the
selected grid cells in the county group associated with that reference county.
The min/max temperatures determine the MOVES runs that are needed for
generating the RPD and RPV emission rates. The temperature increments listed in
the header are used to define the temperature bins used to optimize the MOVES
runs (Table 5). In addition, the output file prepared for the MOVES driver
script contains sets of diurnal temperature profiles based on combinations of
min/max temperature bins for each reference county; these are necessary for the
MOVES vapor-venting emissions calculation that is performed for the RPP
emissions process.
This output
file contains all of the temperature and RH values for all reference counties.
If, for example, the duration of the episode is annual, there are four fuel
months, and the averaging method is monthly, Met4moves outputs four sets of
monthly average RH, min/max temperatures, and 24-hour temperature profiles in
local time for all reference counties into one output file. An example of this
file is provided in Table 5. When each set of fuel month min/max temperatures
begins with the record “min_max” in the temperatureProfileID column, the “Temp1”
and “Temp2” fields can be referred to as minimum and maximum temperatures,
respectively. The remaining records for the specific reference county and fuel
month (the records between this “min_max” and the next “min_max”) are the
24-hour temperature profiles. The profile names, temperatureProfileID, are a
combination of the averaging type (M is for monthly), the last Julian date of
the averaging period, and an index of the profiles (e.g., M2009180003 is the
third monthly profile for the 2009180 averaging period). For a specific
reference county and fuel month, the monthly average RH value is identical for
all the records.
Table 5. Format of reference
county minimum/maximum temperatures, relative humidity, temperature increments,
and temperature profiles used as input to MOVES driver script
|
#
DESC Sample Met input file for MOVES Driver script
PD_TEMP_INCREMENT
5
PV_TEMP_INCREMENT
5
PP_TEMP_INCREMENT
10
|
|
Ref.
County
|
fuelMonth
|
temperatureProfileID
|
RH
|
Temp1
(Min)
|
Temp2
(Max)
|
Temp3
|
…
|
Temp24
|
|
13121
|
1
|
