NEAQS: New England Air Quality Study - International Transport and
Continental Transformation (ITCT) 2004 Field Program
The 2004 Field Season will see the coordination of two NOAA programs,
the New England Air Quality Study (NEAQS) and the International Transport and
Continental Transformation (ITCT) Program under the umbrella of the
International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transportation and
Transformation (ICART2) to improve the linkage between
the global transport and transformation of pollutants and the regional
and continental impacts of air pollution.
ETL contributes to a number of aspects of these programs.
Surface Network
The Surface Network Group
cooradinates a multi-agency network of sensor sites throughout the
northeast to observe the baseline meteorology and chemistry of the region.
High Resolution Ocean Flux Measurements
Models used to forecast and understand the transport and transformation
of pollutants rely on parameterizations of physical environmental
processes in order to approximate processes which can not be observered
or measured. Improving these parameterizations is critical to the
improvement of models. A suite of instruments aboard the R/V Brown
during NEAQS will be used to improve the parameterization of meteorology
and chemistry related to air quality in the region.
Model Forecast Comparison
This effort will compare model predictions with many of the special
meteorological and chemical observations taken during ICARTT: NEAQS-ITCT.
These comparisons will be used to assess the fidelity of meteorological
and chemical parameterizations within the models.
The web site is organized as a cross matrix of the observation types and
the models. Each model's 00 and 12 UTC 48 hour forecast is shown as soon
as it becomes available, and the data are then added to the plots on an
hourly basis as they become available. Ensemble chemical and meteorological
forecasts are also displayed, formed as the mean of the various models.
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