> HYSPLIT model forecasts pollutant levels in coastal Spain
Research Highlight:
HYSPLIT model forecasts pollutant levels in coastal Spain
A high resolution modeling system to forecast hourly pollutant
concentrations for the coastal city of Huelva in southwest Spain and the
Canary Islands started routine experimental testing recently. This work
is a part of the ongoing collaboration between NOAA's Air Resources
Laboratory, the Universidad de Huelva, and the Instituto Nacional de
Meteorologia (National Institute of Meteorology) at the Canary Islands
in Spain. The system, run at the National Institute of Meteorology,
uses NOAA's HYSPLIT model to calculate the emission, transport,
dispersion and deposition of Arsenic and Sulfur Dioxide as emitted from
several large nearby point sources. The HYSPLIT simulation is driven by
outputs from the Fifth-Generation NCAR/Penn State Mesoscale Model
(MM5), with a horizontal resolution of 2 km. The model outputs will be
compared against field measurements of meteorological variables and
pollutant concentrations to assess the system's performance.
Although the HYSPLIT model is currently used to forecast the
dispersion of a potential hazardous material released over urban scales
in the U.S., it has not been possible to evaluate the model against
concentrations measured in the field. This is because most U.S. cities
have too many interfering sources to properly evaluate the modeling
system and limited resources have been available for collecting data
sets for model evaluation. In Huelva and the Canary Islands, there are
well characterized sources of Arsenic and Sulfur Dioxide emissions that
offer a unique opportunity to evaluate the model performance against
measured values in a setting similar to that of an accidental hazard
materials release.
Forecasting the behavior of hazardous materials released into the
atmosphere is fundamental in order to minimize human exposure to harmful
levels. In particular, an accurate estimation of the hourly variability
in the concentrations is essential for emergency applications. While
high resolution dispersion studies carried out using HYSPLIT have
demonstrated the potential use of this simulation tool, the studies only
have been performed for limited periods of time or have used longer
time-averaged measurements for verification. This is the first
application of the HYSPLIT model to forecast Arsenic and Sulfur Dioxide
levels at high resolution.
