Pearl River Delta (PRD), located in south-eastern coast of mainland China, is one of the regions affected by heavy particulate matter (PM) levels. Notwithstanding the potential use of meteorological and air quality modelling to characterize the air pollution problems, little attention has been paid to meteorological model configuration and its impact on air quality modelling applications over the region. Aiming to find the most suitable set of parameterization schemes of the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-ARW) model for air quality modelling applications over the PRD region, a performance experiment was performed. Three tests, with different combinations of parameterization schemes, were created and evaluated. For the best configuration modelling setup, meteorological simulations for a winter (i.e. January) and summer (i.e. July) periods are provided. The meteorological model showed a clockwise deviation for the wind direction and tends to overestimate the temperature and wind speed. It is expected that the present work could reduce the meteorological and air quality modelling uncertainty over the PRD region.