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REVIEW OF THE ATTRIBUTES AND PERFORMANCE OF SIX URBAN DIFFUSION MODELS
Citation:
White, F. REVIEW OF THE ATTRIBUTES AND PERFORMANCE OF SIX URBAN DIFFUSION MODELS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/3-84/089.
Description:
The American Meteorological Society conducted a scientific review of a set of six urban diffusion models. TRC Environmental Consultants, Inc. calculated and tabulated a uniform set of statistics for all the models. The report consists of a summary and copies of the three independent model reviews conducted to evaluate the models. General conclusions included: (1) all of the six models are very similar to each other and represent simple approximations of the urban diffusion situations in a given time period with no horizontal variability of the boundary layer structure or depth; (2) none of the models can be considered state-of-the-art since a great deal has been learned about the planetary boundary layer that could be incorporated into such models; (3) the models all use an all or nothing approach to plume penetration; either the plume penetrates the elevated inversion and is lost to the computation or it is completely trapped; and (4) the four annual models all produced good estimates of the observed concentrations, while, of the short-term models, TEM-8A seriously overpredicted at night and RAM seriously underpredicts during the day.