1. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Upgrade of NOAA's Dispersion Modeling for INL Applications Richard M. Eckman Field Research Division NOAA Air Resources Laboratory 1

2. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Atmospheric Turbulence Small-scale, irregular fluctuations in flow Disperses pollutants, transports energy, momentum, matter Treated statistically 2

3. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Planetary Boundary Layer Convective Boundary Layer (CBL) o Daytime heating = thermals = "unstable" Nocturnal Boundary Layer (NBL) o Inversions = suppressed turbulence = "stable" Neutral Boundary Layer o Strong winds or no heating/cooling o Only mechanical turbulence = "neutral" 3

4. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Older MDIFF Model Largely unchanged since 1990s o DOS/Win3.1 based Puff model 2D wind field Totally "in-house" modeling system o No effective support outside of FRD o Resources insufficient to continue in isolation Lacks important features (deposition, dose computations, forecast ability) 4

5. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Modeling Requirements for New System Client/server configuration Browser-based client software Pre-configured INL release scenarios High-quality background with terrain, cities, etc Multiple radionuclides with dose computations Easy manipulation of output plots User authentication (computer security) Either analyses ("nowcasts") or forecasts Meaningful contours for emergency managers Retain fast execution Retain popular features from MDIFF system 5

6. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory NOAA HYSPLIT Model HYSPLIT = HYbrid, Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Widely used both within and outside of NOAA o Volcanic ash o Wildfire smoke o Fukushima trajectories 3D wind field Deposition, decay, doses, multiple radionuclides Ability to use model forecasts Leverages limited local resources 6

7. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory 3D Wind Shear 7

8. 03/24/20101 Air Resources Laboratory Initial HYSPLIT Shortcomings for INL Use Inability to use NOAA/INL Mesonet observations o Developed wind-field pre-processor program to interpolate Mesonet observations Radiological dose algorithm not complete o Improved algorithm Default interface not suitable for INL application o Developed browser-based interface o Based on Flash technology Default output products more for research applications o New output based on Google Maps o Fully interactive 8

9. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Timeline for INL HYSPLIT Development Effort 9

10. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Example Plume 10

11. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory High Wind Case 11

12. 03/24/2011 Air Resources Laboratory Future Work Additional INL-specific features o Radiological release from arbitrary location (e.g., transportation event) Improve execution speed o Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) o Multi-core processing Mesonet wind fields that account for topography Scenario management program Integration with other NOAA dispersion codes o ALOHA 12