The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) distributes pre-processed regional meteorological data and terrain data as required under Ontario Regulation 419/05. Data are hosted on the MECP website at https://www.ontario.ca/environment-and-energy/map-regional-meteorological-and-terrain-data-air-dispersion-modelling.
The U.S. EPA released the latest update to the AERMOD modeling system – dated 19191 – on August 21, 2019. One of the major formulation updates in this release is the addition of the RLINE source type .
When viewing results from an air dispersion model run, the primary concern of many modelers are conditions measured at receptors located in areas generally accessible by the public. This may preclude modeling from occurring within well-defined property boundaries that restrict public access to a facility.
AERSURFACE is a tool developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) which uses digital land cover data to objectively calculate numeric values of surface characteristics (i.e. albedo, Bowen ratio, and surface roughness) required by AERMET, the meteorological preprocessor for the AERMOD air dispersion model.
The latest update to AERMOD View, Version 9.7, expands the discrete receptor import capabilities making it easier to add receptors – including sensitive receptors – to a project. Using the application-supported CSV file format, AERMOD View can now import additional parameters such as Receptor ID and sensitive receptor flags.
The latest update to AERMET View (Version 9.7) includes a new tool which automates the process of assessing meteorological data quality using advanced quality assurance (QA) procedures. In a previous Modeling Tip, we highlighted the QA options built into the AERMET model. The tool analyzes the surface file output by AERMET (*.SFC) and reports quality of variables being passed to the AERMOD model.