Met Data Questions
There are several reasons why you should consider purchasing prognostic meteorological modeled data:
- Met stations are not available in your area
- No representative met station is available for your site
- Available station data is out of date
- Available station data does not have a sufficient number of years
- Available station data does not meet data quality standards (e.g. poor treatment of calms)
WRF and MM5 are both mesoscale meteorological models. Both models are still in use today however, WRF was developed as an evolutionary successor to the MM5 model and incorporates current state-of-the-science atmospheric physics improvements. Check with your regulatory agency to verify which model they prefer.
The majority of meteorological data is collected from airport met stations. An airports primary concern is high wind speeds which may affect aircraft. Therefore, low wind speeds are often not recorded with sufficient accuracy for air dispersion modeling purposes. This is of particular concern for air dispersion modeling because low wind speeds often result in higher concentrations. The WRF and MM5 models avoid this issue as all wind speeds are calculated with equal accuracy.
Lakes Environmental can provide one year or multiple years of WRF- or MM5-processed met data, depending on your requirements. The most common period requested for regulatory purposes is five consecutive years of meteorological data. For information on the years available for each type of data, please visit our Overview page.
When requesting a quote, the following information should be provided for your desired location:
- Latitude and longitude for the center point of your site
- City name and country name
- Time zone
- Time period required
Please visit our met data order page for further information.
Simply fill the quote request form on our met data order page to automatically receive a quote by email or visit or pricing page.
This will depend on the number of orders we are currently processing, the period the WRF or MM5 data is to cover, and the requested grid resolution. Most orders can be completed in 1 to 3 business days. We can provide you with an estimated delivery date at time of order.
The anemometer height is calculated by our Certified Consulting Meteorologist when processing the data. You will be provided with the anemometer height once your data is complete.
The data that we provide to our clients uses meteorological data provided by a vast global network of meteorological stations and satellite data which have been reanalyzed and gridded into a format suitable for input to the meteorological model. They then use state-of-the-science atmospheric physics conservation equations to calculate how the wind field would behave in between grid cells. Many additional factors are accounted for in the models including terrain and land use as they also influence the wind field for a given location.
WRF and MM5 use 1km by 1km gridded land use to estimate surface properties (surface boundary conditions). It also uses the pre-processed wind field for the global weather simulations to obtain the initial time boundary condition at t=0 and at other times as well.
AERMET/AERMOD-Ready Data
The project location coordinates provided by the customer are used as the center point to define the modeling domain for WRF or MM5. The model is executed using a 12km or 4km grid cell domain depending on which option you specify when ordering, and data are extracted for the single grid cell containing the requested coordinate. Since output from the models represent grid cell averages, data from the extracted cell is representative of any point within the bounded grid cell.
CALMET/CALPUFF-Ready Data
Meteorological models including WRF and MM5 use state-of-the-science atmospheric physics conservation equations and account for more refined parameterizations for processes that cannot be simulated directly. For these reasons WRF and MM5 are classified as prognostic models. CALMET uses a simple mass conservation approach and does not solve the momentum, energy, or moisture conservation equations used by MM5 and WRF. CALMET is classified as a diagnostic model.
Our CALMET-Ready data products are the output of the CALWRF and CALMM5 models which format prognostic model output for use in the CALMET diagnostic model. The user is then required to run CALMET in order to produce meteorological data for input to the CALPUFF model.
Our CALPUFF-Ready data has been processed using the USEPA’s Mesoscale Model Interface Program (MMIF) to produce data which can be directly input to CALPUFF thus bypassing CALMET entirely.
AERMOD-Ready Station Data (USA Only)
Our system uses the latest releases of all preprocessors made available by the USEPA.
AERMINUTE can only be run for Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) stations where 1-minute and 5-minute wind data are available. If the user-selected station is not an ASOS station, AERMINUTE is bypassed.
Our team of expert meteorologists (including a Certified Consulting Meteorologist certified by the American Meteorological Society) rely on experience and regulatory knowledge to select defensible values for surface moisture condition, snow cover, and additional model options. We also use data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly NCDC) to support our decisions.
Yes! Send us an email with your order number and we will send you the data required by your regulatory agency.
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Recommended Products
AERMOD View
Our most commonly used air dispersion model. Applicable to a wide range of buoyant or neutrally buoyant emissions up to a range of 50km. Also suitable for complex terrain and urban dispersion.
CALPUFF View
A non-steady state Gaussian puff model, suitable for long range transport, atmospheric chemistry, visibility and scenarios with complex wind fields, such as coastal and complex terrain areas.