The Mathematics of Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling

This page is still under construction. There are a few corrections and additions still to be made to the solutions, and other web references will also be added.

1. Paper.

"Mathematics of Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling", SIAM Review, 53(2):349-372, 2011.   [ PDF | DOI ]

2. Matlab Code.

a) Standard Gaussian plume solution from Section 3, which requires the following subroutines:

• setparams.m defines all values of the input parameters;
• gplume.m calculates the concentration using the standard plume solution;
• forward.m is the main program that computes the ground-level concentration and plots the results.

b) Plots of the Gaussian plume solution:

Concentration profiles from Fig. 3.1 are generated using the code gpplot.m, which also makes use of gplume.m and setparams.m from above.

c) Ermak's solution with deposition and settling, from Section 3.6:

• setparams.m defines all values of the input parameters (this is identical to the code from a);
• ermak.m calculates the concentration using Ermak's plume solution;
• forward2.m is the main program that computes the ground-level concentrations and the amount of zinc deposited in receptor jars, and then plots the results.

d) Solve the inverse source estimation problem:

The solution to the example from Section 4.1 is computed using inverse1.m.

3. Supplementary material.

a) Solutions to exercises:

• Solutions to the exercises in the paper.

b) Wind data file:

• wind.mat file for Exercise 16.

4. On-line information sources.

• Wikipedia entry for "Atmospheric dispersion modeling".
• Online course: SI 410 Introduction to Dispersion Modeling (US Environmental Protection Agency).
• On-line book: "Workbook of Atmospheric Dispersion Estimates", by D. Bruce Turner (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1970).
• Matlab code: gaussianPlume.m, written by Harold Bien based on the industry-standard software package ISC3.
• Some neat graphics, movies, etc.:
  • Amateur video of a pollutant stack emitting a fluctuating plume that is advected with the wind.
  • Animation of the ash plume from the Icelandic eruption, based on a plume model calculation by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.
  • Reconstruction of the radiactive cesium-137 plume released at Chernobyl, from L'Institut de Radioprotection et Sureté Nucléaire.
  • Forecast of the radiation plume from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, generated by the NY Times.
  • Suggestions for additional links are welcome!