ARL Weekly News – February 10, 2025

6th Annual Summit Presentation

Praveena Krishnan, LaToya Myles, and John Kochendorfer attended Keep Knoxville Beautiful (KKB)’s 6th Annual Summit at the East Tennessee History Center on February 7, 2025. Centered around the theme ‘How to Build a Heat-Resilient City,’ the summit explored innovative strategies for urban heat mitigation and sustainable development. Praveena Krishnan delivered a presentation on NOAA’s urban heat programs, highlighting research activities and initiatives designed to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat in cities.

Presentation at smoke dispersion modeling symposium

Mark Cohen presented “Modeling of Wildfires and Prescribed Burns Using HYSPLIT” virtually at the ADMLC (UK Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling Liaison Committee) Symposium: Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling of Wildfire Smoke Plumes (Feb 13, 2025). The presentation included materials from HyunCheol Kim, Charley Fite, and Tianfeng Chai, Fantine Ngan, and Sonny Zinn. The symposium brought together scientists working on smoke dispersion modeling from wildfires and prescribed burns, an issue of great importance to the U.S. and around the world. The capabilities and limitations of different models were discussed, as well as the key gaps and challenges in providing dispersion modeling predictions for wildfires and prescribed burns. The hybrid meeting was hosted by the UK Met Office.

Accepted for publication

Lee, T. R., S. Pal, T. P. Meyers, P. Krishnan, B. Hirth, M. Heuer, R. D. Saylor, J. Kochendorfer, and J. Schroeder, 2025: “The impact of the Bowen ratio on surface layer parameterizations for heat, moisture, and turbulent fluxes over drylands.” Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, in press.