ARL Weekly News – July 1, 2024

Recent Events

HYSPLIT Helps with July 4th Forecasting

The WFO New York, NY used the HYSPLIT model to support daily briefings to several New York agencies and public safety operations starting 1 July in the lead up to fireworks on Independence Day.

NOAA Research’s Assistant Administrator Steve Thur Visited the AiRMAPS Field Campaign Team in Colorado

On 2 July, OAR Assistant Administrator Steve Thur visited the AiRPMAS field campaign group at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colorado. The ARL team demonstrated the instrumentation on the NOAA Twin Otter aircraft and the ARC mobile lab to measure greenhouse gases and air pollutants in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado.

Presentations

Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Annual Meeting Oral Presentation

Fantine Ngan attended the 21st Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Annual Meeting in South Korea during 23-28 June. She gave an oral presentation titled “Dispersion Simulations for an Oil Burn Experiment in Alaska” in the session of The Physical Processes Over Complex Topography: the Interactions Among Meteorology, Boundary Layer Turbulence, Clouds, Tracer Transport, and Chemistry. 

Abstract: An experiment consisting of seven in-situ oil burns was conducted at Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska, where an Unmanned Aircraft system (UAS) measured PM 2.5 concentrations downwind and radiosondes sampled meteorological profiles. The WRF model generated sub-kilometer grid meteorological fields for HYSPLIT to simulate plume transport and dispersion. Observational nudging with radiosonde data successfully reduced the bias in wind speed and direction prediction, resulting in a plume direction consistent with UAS measurements. The Large Eddy Simulation (LES) run produced more detailed wind field structures and variation compared to the 444-m run employing a PBL parameterization, and even without radiosonde data, the LES WRF simulation matched the in-plume UAS measurements more accurately.

CMAS Webinar Presentation

Patrick Campbell gave a Community Modeling and Analysis System (CMAS) Webinar 25 June on the NOAA-ARL NACC-Cloud platform:

“Use of NOAA’s Global Forecast System Data in the Cloud for Community Air Quality Modeling”

Presenter: Patrick Campbell, George Mason University/NOAA-ARL Affiliate

Abstract:  Here we describe the novel NOAA-EPA Atmosphere-Chemistry Coupler (NACC) in the cloud (“NACC-Cloud”) product (https://nacc.arl.noaa.gov/nacc/). NACC-Cloud on-demand processes NOAA’s operational Global Forecast System version 16 (GFSv16) data, and outputs model-ready meteorological files needed for the widely used Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for any regional domain in the world. NACC is adapted from the U.S. EPA’s Meteorology-Chemistry Interface Processor version 5 (MCIPv5), and was used as the primary model coupler for the operational National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC). NACC-Cloud provides a web-based interface that can readily be used in the air quality modeling community for GFS-driven CMAQ applications. All of the NACC-Cloud development is based on the Amazon Web Services (AWS)-High Performance Computing (HPC) platform, specifically the AWS ParallelCluster v3.0. The main topics described in our presentation include 1) background on the GFSv16 and NACC software, 2) AWS-HPC environment and GFSv16 data in the cloud, 3) development and demonstration of the NACC-Cloud interface for the community, 4) examples of current applications of NACC-Cloud, and 5) future opportunities.

The recording and slides are available at: https://www.cmascenter.org/resources/webinars.cfm

Three Presentations at the NOAA CESSRST and NCAS-M Workshop

A Joint Collaborative Research and Development Project workshop entitled “Monitoring Urban Environment – In Situ, Remotely, and Socially” was staged by NOAA’s Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies (CESSRST) and NOAA’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) as part of their joint Planetary Boundary Layer within an Urban/Suburban Environment project at the Howard University research facility in Beltsville, MD during the week of July 8-12, 2024.  As part of this workshop, three ARL/ASMD scientists, Howard Diamond, Lacey Holland, and Mark Cohen were invited to give talks, respectively, on (1)  Surface Observations – U.S. Climate Reference Network and UrbanNet; (2) ARL’s Air Quality Research Efforts; and (3) and Overview of HYSPLIT.