UBC ATSC 595 AERMOD

AERMOD

Overview

AERMOD is a steady-state plume model that incorporates air dispersion based on planetary-boundary-layer turbulence structure and scaling concepts, including treatment of both surface and elevated sources, and both simple and complex terrain.
It uses other programs (AERMET and AERMAP) as run separately as pre-processors to create the needed meteorology files and receptor location files that can be used as input to AERMOD.

Used For*

For short-range dispersion (within 50 km of the source).

Source types: Multiple point, area and volume sources
Source releases: Surface, near surface and elevated sources
Source locations: Urban or rural locations. Urban effects are scaled by population.
Plume types: Continuous, buoyant plumes
Plume deposition: Dry or wet deposition of particulates and/or gases
Plume dispersion treatment: Gaussian model treatment in horizontal and in vertical for stable atmospheres. Non-Gaussian treatment in vertical for unstable atmospheres
Terrain types: Flat, or flat with simple hills (but not steep terrain mountains & valleys) **
Building effects: Handled by BPIP-PRIME downwash algorithms
Meteorology data height levels: Accepts meteorology data from multiple heights
Meteorological data profiles: Vertical profiles of wind, turbulence and temperature are created

* from Wikipedia. ** from Stull.

Overview Slides by Davi Monticelli : How to organize work folders ; AERMET Download Met Data ; AERMET Stages 1-3 ; AERMOD Theory & Practice ; Examples .

Types of Inputs

Intro (2024) slides by Stull.
Useful values for the Bowen Ratio , Albedo , Roughness Length .
Slides on Exceedances, Percentiles & AERMOD by Stull (2024)

Example of AERMOD use in western Canada

British Columbia Air Quality Dispersion Modelling Guideline (2022) (pdf)
and an introductory primer to Air Quality modeling in BC:
Alberta Air Quality Model Quideline (2021) (pdf)
and a draft guide on how to interpret Air Quality Modelling Results (2024) for AB.

A python version of AERMOD by Costanzini et al, 2018. (interesting, but not EPA approved)

Links for the 2024 course:

Use links from previous years (see below), unless new links are provided here.

How to install AERMOD & AERMET & AERMAP on the UBC computer-v2. (written by Tim Chui)

EPA website for AERMOD and associated models.

For a users, see the detailed User's Guide and the list of all parameters in the Quick Reference Guide.
For tips on what data to use in AERMOD, see the Implementation Guide.
For technical documentation of equations and parameterizatinos, see the Model Formulation Document.

Links for the 2021 course:

The fortran source code, sample input files, and PC/Windows executables are available on the EPA web page:

https://www.epa.gov/scram/air-quality-dispersion-modeling-preferred-and-recommended-models#aermod

For Windows users…Good news:

You can just download the pre-compiled executables from the web site above …no compiling required!
Or, you can still follow along with the Mac/Linus instructions below, but using Powershell or Cygwin to run on the command line.
But even better…AERMOD software was made with Windows users in mind, so all of the compilation scripts are already ready-to-go.

For Mac/Linux users, Tim Chui created these AERMOD installation instructions updated in Dec 2021 to install AERMOD + AERMET + AERMAP.

We’ll be following this for the AERMOD/AERMET/AERMAP installation class. Feel free to take a look before class, but it’s not necessary…we’ll be going through it all step-by-step in class.

Links for the 2018 course:

The EPA recommended air quality dispersion models are AERMOD and CALPUFF: https://www.epa.gov/scram/air-quality-dispersion-modeling-preferred-and-recommended-models

AERMOD Model Dynamics, Physics & Parameterizations: See AERMOD Model Formulation (2018):
https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/models/aermod/aermod_mfed.pdf
We will discuss this in class, so that AERMOD is not a "black box" to you.

Here is a link to the installation instructions from the 2018 course at UBC.

There are 3 major sections below, for installing and testing:
A. AERMOD
B. AERMET
C. AERMAP

Additional links from the 2016 version of this course:

Model Dynamics, Physics & Parameterizations

AERMOD Model Formulation Document http://www.epa.gov/ttn/scram/7thconf/aermod/aermod_mfd.pdf
AERMOD addendum: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/scram/7thconf/aermod/Addendum_to_MFD_v15181.pdf
AERMET User Guide & Addendum: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/scram/7thconf/aermod/aermet_userguide.zip
BPIP-PRIME User Guide & Addendum:

Code sources

AERMOD to calculate pollutant concentrations: http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/dispersion_prefrec.htm#aermod
AIRMET pre-processor for meteorology (run before running AERMOD) http://www3.epa.gov/scram001/metobsdata_procaccprogs.htm
BPIPPRM pre-processor for building downwash (run before AERMOD) http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/dispersion_related.htm#bpipprm
AERMAP terrain pre-processor (run before AERMOD) http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/dispersion_related.htm#aermap
MMIF converts WRF output to AERMOD input (run before AERMOD) http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/dispersion_related.htm#mmif
AERPLOT converts AERMOD output to kmz file for Google Earth. (run after running AERMOD) http://www3.epa.gov/ttn/scram/dispersion_related.htm#aerplot

Utility Functions

R scripts for drawing contour lines and filled contours. plot3D (Jan 2016) , bulit-in functions , more , more2 ,

Model running resources

Install and compile AERMOD on your own Macs. (our TA Matt has step-by-step instructions -v1.2 )
AERMOD Users Manual as pdf (or http://www.epa.gov/ttn/scram/models/aermod/aermod_userguide.zip )
Install and compile AERMET meteorological pre-processor on your Mac. (tips from TA Matt, with help from Pedro)

Other Resources

Paper by Stull & Ainslie 2006: A simple model for pollution dispersion in a convective boundary layer. JAMC.
PowerPoint about Building Downwash - Problems, Solutions & Next Generation , by Ron Peterson, Aug 2015.

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