HQ

A one day HYSPLIT short course was given to 13 participants on Sunday, January 7, 2018, as part of the 98th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. The short course titled, “Using PC/Mac-based HYSPLIT for Basic Trajectory and Dispersion Applications” was designed for novice HYSPLIT users and focused on the basic trajectory and particle dispersion calculation with each participant using their own PC or Mac. Topics included meteorological data sources required for the computations, the trajectory calculation, sources of trajectory error, and the use of multiple trajectories including cluster analysis. The generation of multiple particle trajectories to compute dispersion patterns and air concentrations were also reviewed, including the uncertainty introduced by the limitations of the meteorological data. Instructors for this short course were Roland Draxler, Ariel Stein, and Glenn Rolph.

Dr. Ariel Stein served as Session Chair and lead author/presenter of a paper entitled, “Using Tracer Experiment Data to Test and Evaluate the HYSPLIT Lagrangian Model Inverse System” and as co-author of paper a titled, “Advances in National Air Quality Forecast Capability’s Fine Particulate Matter Predictions.” These activities were part of AMS’s 20th Joint Conference on the Applications of Air Pollution Meteorology with the Air & Waste Management Association (A&WMA). Barry Baker was the lead author and presenter of a paper entitled, “A New Long-Term Dust Record using the U.S. EPA Air Quality System Monitors” as part of AMS’s 10th Symposium on Aerosol-Cloud-Climate Interactions.

FRD

During a meeting this week, the Department of Energy Idaho Operations Office (DOE-ID) agreed to fully fund a new interagency agreement with FRD for Fiscal Year 2019. The funding will be sufficient to continue activities at the same level as in past agreements. One change is that DOE-ID wants a one-year agreement with extensions rather than a five-year agreement. This is due to their concern regarding long-term funding. Since the prior five-year agreements could easily be cancelled by either agency and did not actually obligate funds for five years (funds were obligated incrementally using the agreement as an umbrella), there really is not much practical difference between a one- and five-year agreement other than paperwork.

Brad Reese has developed a prototype new web interface for the HYRad dispersion system that is based almost entirely on standard javascript and HTML5, avoiding reliance on proprietary additions such as the Flash plug-in that are subject to the whims of the companies supporting them. The existing HYRad interface does use Flash and will no longer be usable once support for Flash ends. Providing a map background for plumes in the prototype is being done with Google Maps, because there are currently limited open-source options for generating high-quality maps that can be panned and zoomed.

ATDD

Bruce Baker, Ed Dumas,Temple Lee, Michael Buban, Rick Saylor, and John Kochendorfer attended the AMS Annual Meeting in Austin, TX, where ATDD participants authored or co-authored 10 oral presentations. Bruce Baker chaired the 19th Symposium on Meteorological Instrumentation and Observations and John Kochendorfer presented “Errors and Adjustments for WMO-SPICE Tipping-Bucket Precipitation Gauges” and was a co-author on “A New Low Cost Sensor for Determining Heat and Moisture Fluxes” with lead author and presenter, Dr. Temple Lee. Dr. Lee, who co-authored four additional papers, also chaired the session on Use of UAVs for Atmospheric Research That Includes Discussions on Platforms, Instrumentation, Regulations, and Science II, during which Edward Dumas presented, “Use of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems in VORTEX-SE 2017 and LAFE 2017.” Dr. Michael Buban presented, “The Role of Surface Heterogeneities on Low-Level Vorticity Production and Boundary Layer Characteristics during VORTEX-SE.” Dr. Rick Saylor presented, “The Atmospheric Chemistry and Canopy Exchange Simulation System for Ammonia (ACCESS-NH3): Formulation and Application to Measurements from a Deciduous Forest Canopy” during the 20th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry.

Edward Dumas gave a presentation on research that was done with ATDD’s small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS), the DJI S-1000, to make atmospheric boundary layer measurements during the Great American solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Entitled, “Small Unmanned Aircraft System Flights during the 2017 Solar Eclipse,” this presentation was part of the 15th Conference on Space Weather and provided excellent exposure to a broader audience of AMS attendees. Following the presentation, the program chairperson, Barbara Thompson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, invited each of the presenters to include their research as part of a NASA article being prepared for Sky and Telescope Magazine by Dr. Alex Young of NASA GSFC. ATDD’s research will be included in the Sky and Telescope article.