Lakes Environmental Newsletter

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Upcoming Courses

Date	Course	Location	Registration
Sep 17-18, 2018 Sep 19-21, 2018	AERMOD CALPUFF	San Francisco, CA	Register Now
Oct 4-5, 2018	AERMOD	Toronto, ON	Register Now
Oct 8-9, 2018	AERMOD	São Paulo, Brazil	Register Now
Oct 29 - Nov 1, 2018	AERMOD CALPUFF	Dubai, UAE	Register Now
Nov 1-2, 2018	AERMOD	Orlando, FL	Register Now
Nov 12-15, 2018	AERMOD CALPUFF	Mexico City	Register Now
Feb 18-19, 2019 Feb 20-22, 2019	AERMOD CALPUFF	Dallas, TX	Registration Coming Soon
Feb 25-26, 2019	AERMOD	Toronto, ON	Registration Coming Soon
Mar 11-14, 2019	AERMOD CALPUFF	Singapore	Registration Coming Soon
Apr 29-30, 2019 May 1-3, 2019	AERMOD CALPUFF	Las Vegas, NV	Registration Coming Soon
May 27-28, 2019	AERMOD	London, UK	Registration Coming Soon

For more information on the above courses, including registration information, location, and course outlines, please visit our web site: https://www.weblakes.com/courses.html.

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Modeling Tip

Reading AERMOD SFC File Headers

AERMET, the meteorological preprocessor used to generate meteorological data for use in the AERMOD air dispersion model, creates two unique files:

A surface file (*.SFC) containing surface-level variables and turbulence scaling parameters calculated by AERMET, and A profile file (*.PFL) containing multi-level variables for boundary layer profile analysis in AERMOD.

Each SFC file contains a single line header which provides information about stations processed by AERMET. That information is described below in detail to assist users in decoding this information.

Station Location

Latitude / longitude coordinates of the Onsite or hourly Surface station processed by AERMET are listed here. Precision to three decimal places is used

Station IDs

Identification numbers for each pathway station processed by AERMET are included. Onsite Pathway station IDs (OS_ID) are typically user-defined values. Surface (SF_ID) and Upper Air (UA_ID) ID numbers are most commonly taken from one of two station databases:

1. WBAN (Weather Bureau Army Navy) – A North American system using 5-digit ID numbers for weather stations in the United States and select stations in Canada.
2. WMO (World Meteorological Organization) – A global system using 6-digit ID numbers where the first number specifies the region (e.g., 0/1 = Europe, 2/3 = Russia, 7 = North America). Only the first 5 digits are shown because AERMET was primarily designed around the WBAN database.

A good reference for these station ID numbers is the Interated Surface Database Station History document found on the National Centers for Environmental Information FTP server: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/isd-history.txt. The first column (USAF) corresponds to the WMO ID while the second column (WBAN) is the WBAN ID.

AERMET Version

The version number of the AERMET model used to process the data is included. AERMOD uses this information to produce a fatal error or warning message if the AERMET version is much older than the version of AERMOD being used. For more information, see our archived Modeling Tip at https://www.weblakes.com/Newsletter/2013/Feb2013.html#tip.

Processing Options

A list of options enabled in AERMET. Options include:

1. ASOS 1-Minute Threshold (THRESH_1MIN) – A threshold applied against AERMINUTE data files containing hourly-averaged wind data from ASOS equipment.
2. Adjusted Surface Friction Velocity (ADJ_U*) – Adjusted surface friction velocity calculation applied
3. MMIF Version #.# – Input data to AERMET generated using the US EPA MMIF utility for processing prognostic model data from WRF or MM5.
4. Bulk Richardson Number (BULKRN) – Bulk Richardson scheme used to process incoming solar radiation and delta-temperature data in lieu of cloud cover.

Submit Your Modeling Tips Today!

We are currently accepting submissions for the Monthly Modeling Tip section that appears in our newsletters. If you have a modeling tip that may benefit our readers, please send it to us at support@webLakes.com. Your name and the name of your organization will appear below the tip providing you with an opportunity for increased exposure.

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Articles

Rising Sea Levels Could Cost the World $14 Trillion a Year by 2100

July 4, 2018 - Failure to meet the United Nations’ 2ºC warming limits will lead to sea level rise and dire global economic consequences, new research has warned.

Published today in Environmental Research Letters, a study led by the UK National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) found flooding from rising sea levels could cost $14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100, if the target of holding global temperatures below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels is missed.

Read Full Article Here

China’s Emissions Reversal Cause for “Cautious Optimism”

July 3, 2018 - The decline in China’s carbon emissions is likely to be sustained if changes to the country’s industrial structure and energy efficiency continue, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

As part of the Paris Agreement, China pledged to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030. In fact, China may already have fulfilled this commitment, with emissions peaking in 2013 at a level of 9.5 Gigatons of CO2, and declining in each year from 2014 to 2016.

Read Full Article Here

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and NOAA Announce New Coastal Resilience Funding

July 3, 2018 - The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today announced a partnership that will restore, increase and strengthen natural infrastructure — the landscapes that help absorb the impacts of storms and floods — to protect coastal communities, while also enhancing habitats for fish and wildlife.

In its inaugural year, the National Coastal Resilience Fund will invest up to $30 million in the restoration or expansion of natural features such as coastal marshes and wetlands, dune and beach systems, oyster and coral reefs, mangroves, forests, coastal rivers, as well as barrier islands that help minimize the impacts of storms, rising sea levels and other extreme events on nearby communities and infrastructure. NOAA will use a small portion of the funding for scoping designed to assist communities in getting the regional information they need to make ocean and coastal management decisions and provide economic, security, and environmental benefits.

Read Full Article Here

Time to Press the Reset Button on Canada’s National Parks

June 26, 2018 - Last summer, my daughter and I hiked the Sulphur Skyline trail in Jasper National Park. As it was mid-week, we had hoped it would not be as crowded as it can be on a weekend.

Nothing, however, prepared us for the caravan of people we encountered along the way.

There were seasoned hikers like us. But there were also people stumbling along in flip flops and city shoes, a young man with a boombox blasting from his shoulder and slower folk who eventually turned back because they could not trek up the steep mountainside.

Read Full Article Here

Heated Dilemmas

June 21, 2018 - As hurricane season commences on the East Coast and the West Coast heads into fire season, there’s no time like the present to consider the short- and long-term effects of responses to disasters being shaped by the climate of a warming Earth. Are we doing enough to ensure our future well-being in the face of climate change, or are we too distracted by intense but relatively infrequent disasters such as fire and flood to contemplate the big-picture changes we need to make?

It’s a difficult question that researchers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Washington are now trying to answer. The multidisciplinary team contends that short-term management responses to disasters “may be inefficient and even maladaptive in the long term.” Their paper, “The dangers of disaster-driven responses to climate change,” is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Read Full Article Here

For additional environmental news, visit the Environmental News Network (ENN), the most
dependable online environmental news source!

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Upcoming Conferences & Trade Shows

Aug 6-7, 2018	4th World Congress on Climate Change and Global Warming More Info	Osaka, Japan
Sep 21-22, 2018	6th International conference on Marine Science, Coastal Dynamics and Management More Info	Dallas, TX, USA
Oct 29-30, 2018	20th International Conference on Earth Science and Climate Change (ICESCC 2018) More Info	Paris, France
Oct 30-Nov 1, 2018	WHO’s First Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health More Info	Geneva, Switzerland
Nov 4-8, 2018	SETAC North America 39th Annual Meeting More Info	Sacramento, CA, USA
Nov 14-16, 2018	10th Better Air Quality Conference (BAQ 2018) More Info	Kuching, Malaysia
Nov 21-22, 2018	International Conference on Environmental Technology and Innovations (ICETI 2018) More Info	Prague, Czech Republic
Dec 5-6, 2018	9th International Conference on Global Warming, Climate Change and Pollution Control More Info	Vancouver, BC, Canada
Dec 6-8, 2018	6th International Conference on Environment Pollution and Prevention (ICEPP 2018) More Info	Brisbane, Australia
Jan 3-5, 2019	The IAFOR International Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment – Hawaii 2019 More Info	Honolulu, HI, USA
Jan 14-17, 2019	World Future Energy Summit More Info	Abu Dhabi, UAE
Feb 13-15, 2019	10th International Conference on Environmental Science and Development More Info	Milan, Italy
Feb 25-27, 2019	22nd EUEC 2019: Energy, Utility & Environment Conference More Info	San Diego, CA, USA

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About this Newsletter

This newsletter contains information gleaned from various sources on the web, with complete links to the sources cited. Organizations cited are in no way affiliated with Lakes Environmental Software.

Lakes Environmental Software is a leading environmental IT company that offers a complete line of air dispersion modeling, risk assessment, emissions inventory, and emergency release software as well as training and custom software services. With satisfied users located around the globe, Lakes Environmental Software will continue to revolutionize the environmental software field.

For more information please visit our web site at: www.webLakes.com.  You may also contact us by phone at (519) 746-5995.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.  You can e-mail us at: support@webLakes.com.

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