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REPRESENTATION OF ATMOSPHERIC MOTION IN MODELS OF REGIONAL-SCALE AIR POLLUTION
Citation:
Lamb, R. AND S. Hati. REPRESENTATION OF ATMOSPHERIC MOTION IN MODELS OF REGIONAL-SCALE AIR POLLUTION. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-87/326 (NTIS PB88202148), 1987.
Description:
A method is developed for generating ensembles of wind fields for use in regional scale (1000 km) models of transport and diffusion. The underlying objective is a methodology for representing atmospheric motion in applied air pollution models that permits explicit treatment of the uncertainty inherent in the specification of atmospheric states. The nature of this uncertainty is illustrated by showing that a set of discrete meteorological observations made at a given moment in time and the diagnostic equations of fluid motion together define a manifold in function space each point of which is a possible description of the state of the atmosphere at the moment the observations were made. It is argued that hypotheses can be adduced regarding the liklihood that individual points on the manifold describe the atmospheric state at the time of the observations; but that contrary to common practice adequate information does not exist to allow one to state with certainty that a specific function is the correct description. The paper shows that dynamic programming is ideally suited to finding these sequences which constitute the desired ensemble of wind specifications in space and time.