The eddy covariance technique is a key atmospheric measurement technique to measure and calculate vertical turbulent fluxes within atmospheric boundary layers. The method analyzes high-frequency wind and scalar atmospheric data series, and yields values of fluxes of these properties. It is a statistical method used in meteorology and other applications to determine exchange rates of trace gases over natural ecosystems and agricultural fields, and to quantify gas emissions rates from other land and water areas. It is frequently used to estimate momentum, heat, water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane fluxes.
Atmospheric dispersion modeling is the mathematical simulation of how air pollutants disperse in the ambient atmosphere. It is performed with computer programs that include algorithms to solve the mathematical equations that govern the pollutant dispersion. The dispersion models are used to estimate the downwind ambient concentration of air pollutants or toxins emitted from sources such as industrial plants, vehicular traffic or accidental chemical releases. They can also be used to predict future concentrations under specific scenarios. Therefore, they are the dominant type of model used in air quality policy making. They are most useful for pollutants that are dispersed over large distances and that may react in the atmosphere. For pollutants that have a very high spatio-temporal variability and for epidemiological studies statistical land-use regression models are also used.
The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute is the Dutch national weather forecasting service, which has its headquarters in De Bilt, in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands.
The Air Quality Modeling Group (AQMG) is in the U.S. EPA's Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) and provides leadership and direction on the full range of air quality models, air pollution dispersion models and other mathematical simulation techniques used in assessing pollution control strategies and the impacts of air pollution sources.
The UK Dispersion Modelling Bureau is part of the Met Office which is the UK's national weather and meteorological service. The meteorologists in the bureau are among the UK's leading experts in areas such:
Roadway air dispersion modeling is the study of air pollutant transport from a roadway or other linear emitter. Computer models are required to conduct this analysis, because of the complex variables involved, including vehicle emissions, vehicle speed, meteorology, and terrain geometry. Line source dispersion has been studied since at least the 1960s, when the regulatory framework in the United States began requiring quantitative analysis of the air pollution consequences of major roadway and airport projects. By the early 1970s this subset of atmospheric dispersion models were being applied to real world cases of highway planning, even including some controversial court cases.
The Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling Liaison Committee (ADMLC) is composed of representatives from government departments, agencies and private consultancies. The ADMLC's main aim is to review current understanding of atmospheric dispersion and related phenomena for application primarily in the authorization or licensing of pollutant emissions to the atmosphere from industrial, commercial or institutional sites.
The National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) is located at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is a national support and resource center for planning, real-time assessment, emergency response, and detailed studies of incidents involving a wide variety of hazards, including nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, and natural emissions.
CALPUFF is an advanced, integrated Lagrangian puff modeling system for the simulation of atmospheric pollution dispersion distributed by the Atmospheric Studies Group at TRC Solutions.
The ADMS 3 is an advanced atmospheric pollution dispersion model for calculating concentrations of atmospheric pollutants emitted both continuously from point, line, volume and area sources, or intermittently from point sources. It was developed by Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) of the UK in collaboration with the UK Meteorological Office, National Power plc and the University of Surrey. The first version of ADMS was released in 1993. The version of the ADMS model discussed on this page is version 3 and was released in February 1999. It runs on Microsoft Windows. The current release, ADMS 5 Service Pack 1, was released in April 2013 with a number of additional features.
The AERMOD atmospheric dispersion modeling system is an integrated system that includes three modules:
A line source, as opposed to a point source, area source, or volume source, is a source of air, noise, water contamination or electromagnetic radiation that emanates from a linear (one-dimensional) geometry. The most prominent linear sources are roadway air pollution, aircraft air emissions, roadway noise, certain types of water pollution sources that emanate over a range of river extent rather than from a discrete point, elongated light tubes, certain dose models in medical physics and electromagnetic antennas. While point sources of pollution were studied since the late nineteenth century, linear sources did not receive much attention from scientists until the late 1960s, when environmental regulations for highways and airports began to emerge. At the same time, computers with the processing power to accommodate the data processing needs of the computer models required to tackle these one-dimensional sources became more available.
DISPERSION21 is a local scale atmospheric pollution dispersion model developed by the air quality research unit at Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), located in Norrköping.
Fundamentals of Stack Gas Dispersion is a book devoted to the fundamentals of air pollution dispersion modeling of continuous, buoyant pollution plumes from stationary point sources. The first edition was published in 1979. The current fourth edition was published in 2005.
Air pollution dispersion – distribution of air pollution into the atmosphere. Air pollution is the introduction of particulates, biological molecules, or other harmful materials into Earth's atmosphere, causing disease, death to humans, damage to other living organisms such as food crops, or the natural or built environment. Air pollution may come from anthropogenic or natural sources. Dispersion refers to what happens to the pollution during and after its introduction; understanding this may help in identifying and controlling it. Air pollution dispersion has become the focus of environmental conservationists and governmental environmental protection agencies of many countries regarding air pollution control.
The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI) is within the Environmental Ministry of the Czech Republic. The head office and centralized workplaces of the CHMI, including the data processing, telecommunication and technical services, are located at the Institute's own campus in Prague. The CHMI has five major divisions:
The MEMO model is a Eulerian non-hydrostatic prognostic mesoscale model for wind-flow simulation. It was developed by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in collaboration with the Universität Karlsruhe. The MEMO Model together with the photochemical dispersion model MARS are the two core models of the European zooming model (EZM). This model belongs to the family of models designed for describing atmospheric transport phenomena in the local-to-regional scale, frequently referred to as mesoscale air pollution models.
SAFE AIR is an advanced atmospheric pollution dispersion model for calculating concentrations of atmospheric pollutants emitted both continuously or intermittently from point, line, volume and area sources. It adopts an integrated Gaussian puff modeling system. SAFE AIR consists of three main parts: the meteorological pre-processor WINDS to calculate wind fields, the meteorological pre-processor ABLE to calculate atmospheric parameters and a lagrangian multisource model named P6 to calculate pollutant dispersion. SAFE AIR is included in the online Model Documentation System (MDS) of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and of the .Italian Agency for the Protection of the Environment (APAT).
Flux footprint is an upwind area where the atmospheric flux measured by an instrument is generated. Specifically, the term flux footprint describes an upwind area "seen" by the instruments measuring vertical turbulent fluxes, such that heat, water, gas and momentum transport generated in this area is registered by the instruments. Another frequently used term, fetch, usually refers to the distance from the tower when describing the footprint.