ARL Weekly News – October 8, 2021

Recent Events

Mercury Monitoring Installation at Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory

Paul Kelley and Winston Luke of NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory traveled to Utqiaġvik Alaska to install a Tekran mercury speciation system at Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. NOAA’s baseline observatories are administered by the Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, CO and are located in remote regions of the globe to measure the chemical composition of the background atmosphere.  The Tekran speciation system continuously measures  atmospheric concentrations of gaseous elemental mercury, gaseous oxidized mercury, and particulate-bound mercury in particles smaller than 2.5 µm in diameter. These long term  measurements in the Arctic will continue indefinitely.

MACCS User Group Meeting

Mark Cohen gave an invited talk at the virtual 2021 International MACCS (MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System) User Group Meeting convened by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Sept 20, 2021, “The NOAA HYSPLIT Atmospheric Transport and Dispersion Model: Recent Updates and Nuclear Applications.” The presentation summarized current ARL research and development activities with the HYSPLIT model and highlighted numerous radiological applications. MACCS is used widely for a variety of domestic and international  nuclear applications and in a major upgrade to the code, HYSPLIT has recently been integrated into the system. There was substantial interest among the participants in the use of HYSPLIT for these applications.

10th Annual Asian-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network Partners Meeting

Mark Cohen gave an invited talk at the virtual 10th Annual Asian-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network Partners Meeting on Oct 6, 2021 “Using the HYSPLIT Model to Help Interpret Atmospheric Mercury Monitoring Data.” The presentation introduced the HYSPLIT model to the participants and described how it could be used in conjunction with measurements to estimate source-receptor relationships. There were ~50 participants in the meeting from ~20 different countries, and most of the attendees were involved with field measurements of mercury in their particular country. There was substantial interest in the use of HYSPLIT to help understand and interpret measurements and the possibility of a more extensive workshop for the group is being considered.