CMAQ Inputs and Test Case Data

Benchmark Test Case Downloads

Benchmark input and output comparison data to test the build of CMAQ version 5.4 are  available from the CMAS Center Data Warehouse Google Drive and EPA's anonymous FTP server. The benchmark data set is a two day simulation for July 1-2, 2018 on a 100 column x 105 row x 35 layer 12-km resolution domain over the northeast U.S.  Benchmark input includes all files needed to run base CMAQ, WRF-CMAQ, CMAQ-ISAM or CMAQ-DDM-3D.  Similarly the output includes reference output for all four types of model simulations. 

Additional Input Data

Use the following links to download additional input data depending on the needs of your CMAQ simulation.

The National Emissions Inventory (NEI) Modeling Platforms

The National Emissions Inventory (NEI) is a comprehensive and detailed estimate of air emissions of criteria pollutants, criteria precursors, and hazardous air pollutants from air emissions sources. The NEI is released every three years based primarily upon data provided by State, Local, and Tribal air agencies for sources in their jurisdictions and supplemented by data developed by the US EPA.

The NEI modeling platforms are the full set of emissions inventories, other data files, software tools, and scripts that process the emissions into the form needed for air quality modeling. Each emissions modeling platform supports air quality modeling of a historic year and one or more later years. Each platform relies on a version of the NEI for most of its data, although some adjustments are made, including augmenting with additional data and temporal and spatial tuning to support air quality modeling.

• National Emissions Inventory
• NEI Modeling Platforms

Fire Emissions

Fire emissions require fire location, burned areas, and detailed fuel load information.  Examples of where to find these types of datasets are proved below.  All of these information sources can be used to estimate fire emissions. An example of a tool that can be used to generate fire emissions is the US Forest Service BlueSky modeling framework.  BlueSky modularly links a variety of independent models of fire information, fuel loading, fire consumption, fire emissions, and smoke dispersion.  SmartFire Version 2 is one component of the BlueSky modeling framework used to reconcile fire information from multiple sources.  Using these tools and estimating fire emissions can be quite complex so datasets of fire emissions have been created for the community. Examples of these datasets is the Fire Inventory from the National Center for Atmospheric Research or the Global Fire Emissions Database.

• Fire location:
  • Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product
  • National Fire and Aviation Management Web Application
• Burn area estimates:
  • National Interagency Fire Center Open Data Site  (formally available through the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination website)
  • U.S. National Historical Fire Perimeters Data Basin Dataset 
• Fuel loading estimates:
  • US Forest Service Fuel Characteristic Classification System 
• Tool for generating fire emissions:
  • US Forest Service BlueSky Modeling Framework
  • US Forest Service SmartFire Version 2
• Pre-generated fire emissions datasets:
  • Fire Inventory from the National Center for Atmospheric Research 
  • Global Fire Emissions Database 

Processing Spatial Data 

Information on how to create consistent geospatial data for CMAQ inputs using the Spatial Allocator (SA) utility.

• Learn more about processing spatial data for preparing CMAQ inputs.
• Download the SA utility and documentation from the CMAS Center.