ARL Weekly News – June 18, 2021

Recent Events

HYSPLIT Workshop Recordings Available

Last week’s workshop is now online, for those who missed portions.  Visit: 2021 Online HYSPLIT Workshop

Chemtool Plant Fire Response Informed by HYSPLIT

A massive chemical fire started on Monday, June 12, 2021 at the Chemtool plant in Rockton, Illinois. The nature of the chemical fire and the presence of nearby waterways have made fire suppression a challenge, with emergency response lasting for days.   Local agencies ordered mandatory evacuations for residents within a one mile radius were ordered, followed by mask requests for those within a three mile radius.

HYSPLIT models were run at three hour intervals as the fire surged and waned throughout Monday as new explosions erupted. NOAA’s Weather Forecast Office support continued throughout the week, and EPA air quality monitors have been deployed to the area. For more information and images, visit: ARL news

US Drought Portal Includes USCRN Data

Soil moisture data from the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory’s (ARL) US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) is now publicly available through the redesigned U.S. Drought Portal. The portal, Drought.gov, which is hosted by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), was re-launched under a revised National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network. The new network was designed to integrate soil moisture data from sources across federal and state in-situ networks, such as USCRN; remote sensing data; and other modeling capabilities.

Since 2008, NIDIS, ARL and the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) have collaborated to install and manage not only the soil moisture sensors but also the data acquisition integration, data ingest, and quality control for observations at 113 sites in the CONUS. ARL installs and maintains USCRN, a network of 138 climate monitoring stations with sites across the continental US (CONUS), Alaska, and Hawaii. For More Information, visit: ARL news

Upcoming Events

WMO’s Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) Symposium Begins Online June 28.

The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme of WMO focuses on building a single coordinated global understanding of atmospheric composition. ARL’s Ariel Stein co-chairs Session 4: Earth System modelling and data management; it includes contributions about recent progress in investigating the role of atmospheric composition variability and changes on short, medium and extended range weather forecasting, climate modelling, impact modelling as well as about new insights regarding composition/dynamics/radiation/microphysics feedbacks at process level.