ARL Weekly News – December 9, 2024

Recent Events

Operating system update for running HYSPLIT

The servers running the National Weather Service (NWS) HYSPLIT model were successfully refreshed on December 12, 2024. By migrating to the latest version of the operating system, security risks are reduced. After the service cutover, full installation tests were conducted to ensure continued operation of HYSPLIT for NWS. This work started in September and it was done in close collaboration with NOAA Web Operations Center.

National Weather Service requests help for New Year’s Day

Per request from NWS Weather Forecast Office Los Angeles / Oxnard in California, ARL set up automated HYSPLIT simulations for hourly dispersion forecasts based on HRRR meteorology. The simulations are to support the upcoming Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, CA.

Unified Forecast System Short Range Weather App – Smoke and Dust Release

The Short-Range Weather – Smoke and Dust (SRW-SD) prediction capability was released on December 4, 2024. SRW-SD is available on an SRW App feature branch: https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/tree/main_aqm. The smoke and dust capability adds three tracers to model high impact events from smoke and fine and coarse windblown dust particulates. The SRW-SD capability will be operationalized in the Rapid Refresh Forecast System with Smoke and Dust (RRFS-SD) at the NWS replacing the HRRR-Smoke forecasting system.  The SRW-SD capability produces, the hourly wildfire potential, smoke emissions, near surface and vertically integrated smoke, near surface and vertically integrated fine and coarse windblown dust and visibility degradation due to the extreme air quality events. The Fengsha dust emission scheme, developed at NOAA/OAR/ARL is integrated into the system to generate dust emissions from dust sources. New high resolution inputs were developed using NOAA NESDIS satellite products to accommodate the needs of the RRFS-SD as well as the lower resolution operational models at the NWS including the National Air Quality Forecast Capability and the Global Ensemble Forecast System with Aerosols.

 

Publications and Presentations

Air Resources Laboratory at AGU24

ARL scientists contributed 22 posters and oral presentations at the AGU Conference in Baltimore the week of December 9:

Ariel Stein	Town Hall: The U.S. National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS): An Update from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Barry Baker	Oral presentation: Current state of air composition forecasting within NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS) and a look toward the future for Air Quality, Global Chemistry and Seasonal Forecasting
Beiming Tang	Oral presentation: Downscaling NOAA’s atmospheric composition forecasts using advanced AI techniques to create neighborhood scale forecasts of particulate matter and ozone
	Oral presentation: Reconstruct high-resolution surface NO2 concentration for last 20 years in CONUS domain through machine learning data fusion: usage of low-cost sensor data, cost-function optimization, and satellite remote sensing
Chris Loughner	Oral presentation and poster: Development of the Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measurement and Monitoring System (Urban-GEMMS)
Fantine Ngan	Poster: Evaluation of Turbulent Mixing in Dispersion Modeling Using Lidar and Tower Measurements
Hyun Kim	Oral presentation: Multi-Scale Assessment of Wildfire Smoke Impact on Air Quality and Public Health in North America during 2020-2023
Jiayang Sun	Poster: Long-Term (2015-2023) Assessment of Methane Emission Trends in the Baltimore-DC Metropolitan Area from Aerial Measurements
	Poster: Constraining the clumped isotope budget of atmospheric methane using firn air measurements
Margaret Marvin	Poster: Development and Evaluation of Vertically Resolved Biogenic Emission Parameterizations for Modeling Across Scales
Miguel Cahuich	Oral presentation: Optimization of the CarbonTracker-Lagrange (CT-L) atmospheric inversion model for Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD, as part of the Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measurement and Monitoring System (Urban-GEMMS)
Patrick Campbell	Poster: Landscape fires, nitrogen emissions, and deposition: Implications for downwind ecosystems in the U.S.
Praveena Krishnan	Oral presentation: UrbanNet: The NOAA Air Resources Laboratory’s Urban Observing Program
	Town Hall: USGCRP Coordination of Urban Climate Research in the Federal Agencies
	Oral presentation: UrbanNet observations in the Washington DC metro area: Variability of fluxes and turbulence characteristics
Tianfeng Chai	Oral presentation: Improving wildfire smoke predictions by assimilating satellite observations and in-situ PM2.5 measurements with the HYSPLIT model
Wei Li	Poster: Comparative Analysis of Biogenic VOC Emissions from MEGAN2.1 implemented in HEMCO Driven by Various Meteorological Inputs
Wei-Ting Hung	eLightning: Fire Intensity and spRead forecAst (FIRA): A machine learning based fire spread prediction model for air quality forecasting application
Xinrong Ren	Poster: Methane Emissions from the Denver-Julesburg and Uinta Basins based on Aircraft Mass Balance Approach
	Oral presentation: ARL and the Air Resources Car
Youhua Tang	Poster: Use of AEROMMA Aircraft Data to Verify the NOAA’s Unified Forecast System Air Quality Model (UFS-AQM): A Multi-Scenario Comparison