AERMET is the meteorological preprocessor used to prepare data into a format usable by the AERMOD modeling system. One of the four types of data ready by AERMET is hourly surface observations collected into one of several preformatted data file formats. For several years, the primary format used in AERMET’s Surface Pathway has been the Integrated Surface Hourly Database (ISHD) hosted by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
The AERMOD model can produce many different forms of output to support modelers’ needs. For example, highest values (or ranked values) tables are probably the most common form of output. These tables contain concentrations which are not paired in time across the domain but ranked in order from highest to lowest at each individual receptor.
When modeling with source groups in the AERMOD air dispersion model, it is not always obvious how much each source contributes to a calculated concentration. To facilitate source contribution analyses, AERMOD contains a routine called the EVENT model which can analyze user-specified events (e.g., design concentrations, threshold violations) and print each source’s contribution to the short-term (i.e., = 24 hours) event.
There are many reasons why it may be necessary to create a copy of a modeling project. You may want to make edits to a scenario without overwriting previous results, or you need to re-run the project using a different set of meteorological data while maintaining the rest of the inputs.
Did you know that a single license of AERMOD View allows you to perform multiple concurrent AERMOD runs on multiple computers? It’s true! When you install AERMOD View, several additional utility programs are included, and one of these – Batcher – allows modelers to set up a queue of model runs. Batcher can be executed from any computer where AERMOD View is installed even if the full application is not licensed.
The CALPUFF air dispersion modeling system is extremely powerful and contains many refined features for users to conduct air modeling. A consequence of the model’s refined nature means some calculations can take a very long time to complete, however. Some situations may call for a modeler to conduct multiple model runs thus compounding the runtimes.