ARL News

MOSAIC Urban Test Bed Program

 

April 11, 2005

The Meteorological Observation, Simulation, and Interpretation Cooperative (MOSAIC) is gathering mommentum. MOSAIC is an urban test bed program that combines the efforts of many agencies (e.g. BLM, USGS, EPA, DOE) and universities to address questions of air quality and dispersion affecting the Las Vegas valley and southern Nevada in general. CIASTA in conjunction with the Desert Research Institute is the lead organization. Several ARL Divisions are involved, together with the Las Vegas NWS office.

MOSAIC is starting to integrate data from a wide variety of sources in southern Nevada. Mesonet information will derive from the ARL network operated in collaboration with DOE/NNSA. Additional data will come from other federal, state and local agencies. So far, all of these data have been from surface towers. In the near future, data from several vertical profilers will be added, some already operated by ARL at the Nevada Test Site, and others to be operated by CIASTA in the Las Vegas valley. ARL will also deploy a number of ozone monitors, strategically located to test the hypothesis that ozone exceedances experienced in downtown Las Vegas are partially due to ozone and ozone precursors from distant upwind sources (read – “Los Angeles.”)

Contact information: Darryl Randerson
Phone: (702) 295-1231
e-mail: darryl.randerson@noaa.gov