ARL Weekly News – April 27, 2018

HQ
Xinrong Ren was invited to attend a joint international symposium on meteorology and environment at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST) in Nanjing, China April 25-27, 2018. He gave an overview talk titled “The US Northeast Corridor Greenhouse Gas Project – Baltimore/Washington, DC” and presented some results on aircraft and tower network observations from the Fluxes of Greenhouse Gases in Maryland (FLAGG-MD) project. During the symposium, he met with a few colleagues at NUIST and discussed possible collaboration on several research topics.

FRD
FRD has started its dispersion simulations of radiological emissions from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for calendar year 2017. The INL will use these simulations for population-exposure estimates that will appear in the 2017 site environmental report. FRD developed a special version of HYSPLIT to run these annual simulations. This version uses meteorological data from the 34-tower NOAA/INL Mesonet as input and includes modifications to adjust the initial particle heights to account for plume rise from stacks.

The spring semiannual maintenance of the NOAA/INL Mesonet stations is well under way. The technicians are testing out a new set of Excel-based forms to document the maintenance at each station. These forms automatically calculate certain test results based on user input and also dynamically adjust steps in the maintenance procedure depending on the test results. These dynamic forms reduce the chances of computation errors or missed steps during the visits.

ATDD
NOAA Public Affairs arranged to have ATDD’s Dr. Howard Diamond, who is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) Program Manager, interviewed by Mr. John Fialka, who is the founder of ClimateWire. ClimateWire which is an on-line magazine on climate issues that is part of the greater EENews website at https://www.eenews.net/cw. Mr. Fialka is doing a story on the history of climate observing in the U.S., and as such, he had a number of questions on how the USCRN has fit into this subject since its introduction into the field beginning in 2002. The interview went very well, and Dr. Diamond followed up with him by providing him with some supplementary materials to assist him in his article. After that interview, Mr. Fialka was then scheduled to speak with the acting Cooperative Observing Program Manager at the National Weather Service (also arranged for by NOAA Public Affairs). – Howard Diamond, 301-427-2475