Abstract: In this article, we introduce the Brazilian Atmospheric Inventories (BRAIN) and the future perspectives of our database. BRAIN has been developed by a group of young researchers from the Federal University of Santa Catarina to overcome the data gaps for air quality management in Brazil. The initiative started in 2018 using Santa Catarina state as a study case. In 2023, we made available 6 types of datasets containing detailed emissions, meteorology, and air quality data. We currently provide datasets in netCDF format covering the Brazilian territory with 20×20 km of spatial resolution and another covering Southern Brazil with 4×4 km. The emission inventories have been derived from the Brazilian Vehicular Emissions Inventory Software (BRAVES), local industrial emissions data, biomass burning emissions from FINN – Fire Inventory from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and biogenic emissions from the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN). Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) simulations provide the meteorological conditions. Coupling emissions, meteorology, and the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System (CMAQ) simulations produced the air quality dataset with a surface concentration of 216 air pollutants. Preliminary usage of BRAIN datasets demonstrated violations of WHO air quality recommendations, which are not restricted to urbanized areas. Even though BRAIN is a step forward for developing air quality management systems in Brazil, there is plenty of room for improvement mainly related to the quality of emissions inventory. The lack of information on industrial emissions and their temporal variability is an important source of errors. Moreover, the vehicular emissions inventory also needs improvements to properly disaggregate the emissions in high- flow roads. Improvements in boundary conditions and the inclusion of emissions sources from other Latin American countries could also enhance the CMAQ performance. Future versions of BRAIN could address these issues, incorporate other emission sources, and provide CMAQ outputs using different chemical mechanisms. We envision providing enough data to reproduce the historical pattern and future scenarios of air pollution in Brazil through a web platform to facilitate the access and usage of our database.

Keywords: BRAVES, FINN, MEGAN, WRF, CMAQ, Brazil.