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THE NOAA/EPA FLUID MODELING FACILITY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ATMOSPHERIC DISPERSION
Citation:
PERRY, S. G., W. H. SNYDER, D. HEIST, R. S. THOMPSON, R. E. LAWSON, G. E. BOWKER, AND L. BRIXEY. THE NOAA/EPA FLUID MODELING FACILITY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ATMOSPHERIC DISPERSION. Presented at NOAA/EPA Golden Jubilee Symposium, Durham, NC, September 20 - 21, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
The scientific modeling expertise of NERL/AMD technical staff often results in requests for staff to provide timely support and advice to EPA Management in the event of a national emergency and to perform the research on model development and evaluation in support of the development of early response models. Flow and dispersion in urban areas is extremely complex and not well characterized in spite of their importance to homeland security and emergency response applications. Specifically, understanding the transport and fate of pollutants in urban canopies is critical for implementing air quality standards, performing risk assessments, developing environmental management strategies, supporting human exposure and health effects studies. Recently, though, much focus has been placed on supporting the development of homeland security tools needed to prepare for and respond to malicious attacks with toxic chemicals. Toward this goal, laboratory studies have been conducted in EPA's Meteorological Wind Tunnel for idealized urban settings, for very complex settings such as lower Manhattan surrounding the World Trade Center (WTC) site, and for very building specific cases such as the Pentagon. Continued studies in a variety of urban morphologies and release scenarios are needed to support a more thorough understanding of urban dispersion and the development of refined numerical modeling approaches.
Description:
Over the past thirty years, scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Fluid Modeling Facility (FMF) have conducted laboratory studies of fluid flow and pollutant dispersion within three distinct experimental chambers: a meteorological wind tunnel, a water-channel towing tank, and a convection tank. The laboratory is staffed by both National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and EPA scientists and technicians with the collaborative mission of advancing our understanding of atmospheric dispersion. Experimental studies have contributed directly to the development and improvement of many of EPA's and NOAA's numerical models of pollutant transport and diffusion. This paper includes a discussion of the FMF mission, a description of the facility and its capabilities, and a brief overview of the FMF history and the variety of flow and dispersion studies that have been undertaken. Some of the more significant scientific findings and how they have influenced applied dispersion models are described.