J. R. Dorsey

Measurements and parameterizations of small aerosol deposition velocities to grassland, arable crops, and forest: Influence of surface roughness length on deposition

New micrometeorological measurements of small (0.1-0.2 μ diameter) aerosol particle fluxes using the eddy correlation technique are presented for moorland and also for grassland vegetation, the latter measurements being made both before and after cutting of the grassland to observe the resultant change in particle deposition velocity. These data are considered together with previously reported and reanalyzed micrometeorological measurements, again using the eddy correlation technique, for a number of different surface types, including arable crops and forest. Differences in observed surface deposition velocities, vds, due to the different surface roughnesses are highlighted. It was found that the various data sets showed a wholly consistent behavior when ensemble averages over the typical range of atmospheric stability ranges are considered in order to reduce the scatter inherent in these types of measurements. A working parameterization of surface deposition velocity in terms of the surfaces roughness length, z0, is presented. This is then extended for different atmospheric stabilities, using the parameterization suggested by Lamaud et al. [1994c], to yield vds/u* = k1 + k2 (-300 z/L 2/3, where k1 = k1 = 0.001222 log(z0) + 0.003906, k2 = 0.0009, where z is the measurement height, L is the Obukhov stability length, and u* is the local friction speed. The new data are finally compared to current analytical model descriptions of the deposition process, highlighting deficiencies in our understanding of the surface collection efficiency even for these small particles. Copyright 2002 by the American Geophysical Union.

Nitrogen management is essential to prevent tropical oil palm plantations from causing ground-level ozone pollution

More than half the worlds rainforest has been lost to agriculture since the Industrial Revolution. Among the most widespread tropical crops is oil palm (Elaeis guineensis): global production now exceeds 35 million tonnes per year. In Malaysia, for example, 13% of land area is now oil palm plantation, compared with 1% in 1974. There are enormous pressures to increase palm oil production for food, domestic products, and, especially, biofuels. Greater use of palm oil for biofuel production is predicated on the assumption that palm oil is an “environmentally friendly” fuel feedstock. Here we show, using measurements and models, that oil palm plantations in Malaysia directly emit more oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds than rainforest. These compounds lead to the production of ground-level ozone (O3), an air pollutant that damages human health, plants, and materials, reduces crop productivity, and has effects on the Earths climate. Our measurements show that, at present, O3 concentrations do not differ significantly over rainforest and adjacent oil palm plantation landscapes. However, our model calculations predict that if concentrations of oxides of nitrogen in Borneo are allowed to reach those currently seen over rural North America and Europe, ground-level O3 concentrations will reach 100 parts per billion (109) volume (ppbv) and exceed levels known to be harmful to human health. Our study provides an early warning of the urgent need to develop policies that manage nitrogen emissions if the detrimental effects of palm oil production on air quality and climate are to be avoided.

Operational prediction of ash concentrations in the distal volcanic cloud from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption

[1] During the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, improvements were made to the modeling procedure at the Met Office, UK, enabling peak ash concentrations within the volcanic cloud to be estimated. In this paper we describe the ash concentration forecasting method, its rationale and how it evolved over time in response to new information and user requirements. The change from solely forecasting regions of ash to also estimating peak ash concentrations required consideration of volcanic ash emission rates, the fraction of ash surviving near-source fall-out, and the relationship between predicted mean and local peak ash concentrations unresolved by the model. To validate the modeling procedure, predicted peak ash concentrations are compared against observations obtained by ground-based and research aircraft instrumentation. This comparison between modeled and observed peak concentrations highlights the many sources of error and the uncertainties involved. Despite the challenges of predicting ash concentrations, the ash forecasting method employed here is found to give useful guidance on likely ash concentrations. Predicted peak ash concentrations lie within about one and a half orders of magnitude of the observed peak concentrations. A significant improvement in the agreement between modeled and observed values is seen if a buffer zone, accounting for positional errors in the predicted ash cloud, is used. Sensitivity of the predicted ash concentrations to the source properties (e.g., the plume height and the vertical distribution of ash at the source) is assessed and in some cases, seemingly minor uncertainties in the source specification have a large effect on predicted ash concentrations.

Direct measurements and parameterisation of aerosol flux, concentration and emission velocity above a city

Articles have recently been published on aerosol size distributions and number concentrations in cities, however there have been no studies on transport of these particles. Eddy covariance measurements of vertical transport of aerosol in the size range 11 nm<Dp<3 μm are presented here. The analysis shows that typical average aerosol number fluxes in this size range vary between 9000 and 90,000 cm−2 s−1. With concentrations between 3000 and 20,000 cm−3 this leads to estimates of particle emission velocity between 20 and 75 mm s−1. The relationships between number flux and traffic activity, along with emission velocity and boundary layer stability are demonstrated and parameterised. These are used to derive an empirical parameterisation for aerosol concentration in terms of traffic activity and stability. The main processes determining urban aerosol fluxes and concentrations are discussed and quantified where possible. The difficulties in parameterising urban activity are discussed

Effects of land use on surface–atmosphere exchanges of trace gases and energy in Borneo: comparing fluxes over oil palm plantations and a rainforest

This paper reports measurements of land–atmosphere fluxes of sensible and latent heat, momentum, CO2, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), NO, NO2, N2O and O3 over a 30 m high rainforest canopy and a 12 m high oil palm plantation in the same region of Sabah in Borneo between April and July 2008. The daytime maximum CO2 flux to the two canopies differs by approximately a factor of 2, 1200 mg C m−2 h−1 for the oil palm and 700 mg C m−2 h−1 for the rainforest, with the oil palm plantation showing a substantially greater quantum efficiency. Total VOC emissions are also larger over the oil palm than over the rainforest by a factor of 3. Emissions of isoprene from the oil palm canopy represented 80 per cent of the VOC emissions and exceeded those over the rainforest in similar light and temperature conditions by on average a factor of 5. Substantial emissions of estragole (1-allyl-4-methoxybenzene) from the oil palm plantation were detected and no trace of this VOC was detected in or above the rainforest. Deposition velocities for O3 to the rainforest were a factor of 2 larger than over oil palm. Emissions of nitrous oxide were larger from the soils of the oil palm plantation than from the soils of the rainforest by approximately 25 per cent. It is clear from the measurements that the large change in the species composition generated by replacing rainforest with oil palm leads to profound changes in the net exchange of most of the trace gases measured, and thus on the chemical composition of the boundary layer over these surfaces.

Cloud Banding and Winds in Intense European Cyclones: Results from the DIAMET Project

AbstractThe Diabatic Influences on Mesoscale Structures in Extratropical Storms (DIAMET) project aims to improve forecasts of high-impact weather in extratropical cyclones through field measurements, high-resolution numerical modeling, and improved design of ensemble forecasting and data assimilation systems. This article introduces DIAMET and presents some of the first results. Four field campaigns were conducted by the project, one of which, in late 2011, coincided with an exceptionally stormy period marked by an unusually strong, zonal North Atlantic jet stream and a succession of severe windstorms in northwest Europe. As a result, December 2011 had the highest monthly North Atlantic Oscillation index (2.52) of any December in the last 60 years. Detailed observations of several of these storms were gathered using the U.K.’s BAe 146 research aircraft and extensive ground-based measurements. As an example of the results obtained during the campaign, observations are presented of Extratropical Cyclone Fri...

Quantifying particle size and turbulent scale dependence of dust flux in the Sahara using aircraft measurements

The first size-resolved airborne measurements of dust fluxes and the first dust flux measurements from the central Sahara are presented and compared with a parameterization by Kok (2011a). High-frequency measurements of dust size distribution were obtained from 0.16 to 300 µm diameter, and eddy covariance fluxes were derived. This is more than an order of magnitude larger size range than previous flux estimates. Links to surface emission are provided by analysis of particle drift velocities. Number flux is described by a −2 power law between 1 and 144 µm diameter, significantly larger than the 12 µm upper limit suggested by Kok (2011a). For small particles, the deviation from a power law varies with terrain type and the large size cutoff is correlated with atmospheric vertical turbulent kinetic energy, suggesting control by vertical transport rather than emission processes. The measured mass flux mode is in the range 30–100 µm. The turbulent scales important for dust flux are from 0.1 km to 1–10 km. The upper scale increases during the morning as boundary layer depth and eddy size increase. All locations where large dust fluxes were measured had large topographical variations. These features are often linked with highly erodible surface features, such as wadis or dunes. We also hypothesize that upslope flow and flow separation over such features enhance the dust flux by transporting large particles out of the saltation layer. The tendency to locate surface flux measurements in open, flat terrain means these favored dust sources have been neglected in previous studies.

The impact of local surface changes in Borneo on atmospheric composition at wider spatial scales: Coastal processes, land-use change and air quality

We present results from the OP3 campaign in Sabah during 2008 that allow us to study the impact of local emission changes over Borneo on atmospheric composition at the regional and wider scale. OP3 constituent data provide an important constraint on model performance. Treatment of boundary layer processes is highlighted as an important area of model uncertainty. Model studies of land-use change confirm earlier work, indicating that further changes to intensive oil palm agriculture in South East Asia, and the tropics in general, could have important impacts on air quality, with the biggest factor being the concomitant changes in NOx emissions. With the model scenarios used here, local increases in ozone of around 50 per cent could occur. We also report measurements of short-lived brominated compounds around Sabah suggesting that oceanic (and, especially, coastal) emission sources dominate locally. The concentration of bromine in short-lived halocarbons measured at the surface during OP3 amounted to about 7 ppt, setting an upper limit on the amount of these species that can reach the lower stratosphere.

Coordinated Airborne Studies in the Tropics (CAST)

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the American Meteorological Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00290.1

Direct measurements of size-segregated particle fluxes above a city

Atmospheric aerosol particles have major impacts on human health, direct and indirect negative forcing of the Earths radiation budget, atmospheric chemistry as well as on long-range transport and deposition of pollutants, especially in remote areas. Owing to their physical properties and small number concentrations, the measurement of the surface/atmosphere exchange of aerosol particles, especially of the larger particles (Dp > 0.3 p.m), is very challenging. Our understanding of sources and sinks of aerosols, their deposition rates and deposition footprints is therefore still limited. Emissions are usually predicted using emission inventories that are based on activities and emission factors (.e.g. Salway et al., 1997). These emissions are used in atmospheric transport and deposition models and their uncertainties propagate into the quantification of deposition and concentration fields. We here present the first direct measurements of size-segregated particle fluxes above a city representative for a scale of several (100 m) 2. In this study the emission or deposition was measured directly with micrometeorological techniques and the controlling parameters were derived by footprint analysis as well as through comparison with meteorological parameters (e.g. wind speed and direction), traffic densities, potential precursor gas concentrations and PMIo concentrations at street level