Atmospheric modeling in complex terrain

Conference · Tue May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1990

OSTI ID:6777397

Williams, M. D.; Streit, G. E.

Los Alamos investigators have developed several models which are relevant to modeling Mexico City air quality. The collection of models includes: meteorological models, dispersion models, air chemistry models, and visibility models. The models have been applied in several different contexts. They have been developed primarily to address the complexities posed by complex terrain. HOTMAC is the meteorological model which requires terrain and limited meteorological information. HOTMAC incorporates a relatively complete description of atmospheric physics to give good descriptions of the wind, temperature, and turbulence fields. RAPTAD is a dispersion code which uses random particle transport and kernel representations to efficiently provide accurate pollutant concentration fields. RAPTAD provides a much better description of tracer dispersion than do Gaussian puff models which fail to properly represent the effects of the wind profile near the surface. ATMOS and LAVM treat photochemistry and visibility respectively. ATMOS has been used to describe wintertime chemistry of the Denver brown cloud. Its description provided reasonable agreement with measurements for the high altitude of Denver. LAVM can provide both numerical indices or pictoral representations of visibility effects of pollutants. 15 refs., 74 figs.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (USA)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE/MA
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 6777397
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-90-2060; CONF-9003179--1; ON: DE90013165
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540110*
AIR QUALITY
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
CHEMISTRY
COMPILED DATA
COMPLEX TERRAIN
DATA
DISPERSIONS
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
FEDERAL REGION VI
INFORMATION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
METEOROLOGY
MONTE CARLO METHOD
NEW MEXICO
NORTH AMERICA
NUMERICAL DATA
PHOTOCHEMISTRY
POLLUTANTS
USA
VISIBILITY