the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
High resolution Air Quality simulation in the Himalayan valleys, a case study in Bhutan
Abstract. Our study focuses on Bhutan, a highly mountainous country where governmental authorities are increasingly monitoring air pollution. To support further analysis and the monitoring strategy, we present the first high-resolution air quality simulations with the chemistry transport model WRF-CHIMERE over the western region of Bhutan at a spatial resolution of roughly 1 km. Increasing the horizontal resolution of the model improve the performances, decreases potential errors due to too important spatial average of meteorological and emissions data having an high spatial variability. However, the air pollutant emissions must be improved at fine scale with better proxy, particularly for industries where improvement are still required. For the first time, we propose high resolution maps of air pollution (concentrations and deposition fields). Our simulations confirm that Bhutan valleys also suffer from air pollution mainly due to PM2.5 (concentrations exceeding 20 µg m−3) dominated by carbonaceous species, largely above the World Health Organization guidelines. Wildfires and anthropogenic activities release large amount of carbonaceous species and can also impact the glaciers by atmospheric fallout. Wildfires can locally contribute to 20 % of the total PM2.5 concentrations over a 15 days period, and theoretically, black carbon can be transported up to the highest peaks. Ecosystems are at risks with deposition fluxes of sulfur and nitrogen species comparable with other locations at risk in the world.
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Status: open (until 30 Oct 2025)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3641', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Sep 2025 reply
Video supplement
Impact of wildfires on Bhutan environment Bertrand Bessagnet https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16526751
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General comments
The paper High resolution Air Quality simulation in the Himalayan valleys, a case study in Bhutan presents an application of the CHIMERE chemistry transport model over the west Bhutan. Though the modelling application is quite standard the area of study is particularly challenging due to the scarcity of data and available literature.
The authors provided a thorough description of the modelling design and implementation as well as of the evaluation of the obtained results, though limited by the availability of observed meteorological and air quality data.
A second interesting aspect of this paper is the evaluation and discussion of different issues related to the effect of air pollution in remote areas, such as deposition over glaciers and role of wildfires.
Therefore, the paper fits the scope of ACP. The paper is also well written, with concise and clear statements, and it does not require any substantial review of syntax and language.
The paper could be published considering just a general review of the section on the evaluation of the model performance that is sometimes unclear and partially confusing.
To this aim, additional details are available in the following section.
Specific comments and Technical corrections
P4 – R97-98 – Sentence is not clear
P8 – R183 – Are observed data discussed in this subsection presented in Figure S2?
P10 – R2025 - Are observed data discussed in this subsection presented in any figure?
P10 – R219 – Does Figure S5 refer to all available data?
P11 – R229 – A relation exists “between the observed PM coarse fraction” and what?
P11 – r230-235 – This section is not very clear. This paragraph should be focused on model performance evaluation, but here the discussion seems on observed data, which are also compared to literature data
P11 - R238-241 – Discrepancies in Haa stations for PM2.5 during March seem more related to a difficulty of the model in capturing the two episodes (Meteorology? Emissions?) than to spatial resolution
P11 – R250 – “overestimates”
P11 – R253-255 – Is BC time series shown in Figure 5?
P12 – Figure4 – Is this Figure mentioned in the text?
P12 – R258-262 – Are the industrial sources considered as point sources or ground level emissions? Could Also this aspect influence the performance?
P12 – R262-266 – Why do the analysis of meteorological performance is not placed before air quality?
P14 – R294 – contour lines in Figure 8 are visible only over white areas
P15 – R318 – “1 or 2 mg/m2”?
P21 – R380 – How were wildfire emissions estimated and modulated?