– By Richard Leduc, Ph.D., AirMet Science Inc., and Jean-François Brière, Ministère de l’Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques
The US-EPA (2019a) AERMOD dispersion model is widely used to assess the concentration of contaminants in ambient air as a result of emissions from a source. To this end, AERMOD requires micrometeorological variables characterizing turbulence (u*, w*, L, zic, zim); they are calculated by the AERMET module and obtained using local surface and upper air data (wind, temperature and cloud opacity),