Model Change Bulletin MCB#2 AERMET (dated 11059) This Model Change Bulletin documents changes made to the

AERMET Meteorological Preprocessor for the AERMOD Dispersion Model. A brief description of the changes is provided below. Additional details are also available through comments imbedded in the Fortran source code. Changes to the user instructions associated with this update are documented in a separate AERMET User's Guide Addendum. This revised version of AERMET (dated 11059) includes the following modifications relative to the previous version (dated 06341): -- Bug Fixes: 1. Corrected several problems associated with the processing of subhourly ONSITE meteorological data, including: a) Modified the procedure for calculating hourly averages to use the "hour-ending" convention in accordance with Section 7.3 of "Meteorological Monitoring Guidance for Regulatory Modeling Applications," EPA-454/R-99-005, February 2000; previous versions used the "hour-beginning" convention. b) Corrected the procedure for calculating hourly averages from subhourly values for sigma-theta. Previous versions used an equation in Section 5.2 of the AERMET User's Guide, but this has been replaced with the equation referenced in Table 8-3 of Appendix W. The equation from Section 5.2 of the AERMET User's Guide was also coded incorrectly in previous versions of AERMET, which resulted in runtime errors in some cases due to ta ing a square root of a negative number. c) Corrected the processing of subhourly wind data to properly code hours as calm when more than half of the samples for the hour are non-missing, but below the wind threshold. Previous versions coded these hours as missing rather than calm. d) Addressed several issues associated with the extraction of ONSITE data that could result in erroneous values being assigned to ONSITE variables, and also improved error handling and reporting for the processing of ONSITE data. e) Corrected problems associated with processing of ONSITE precipitation data, including the fact that subhourly precipitation values were averaged rather than summed to determine the hourly value, and that negative values were also included in the summed value (before averaging) if the missing data code was not properly specified. 2. The implementation of the SUBNWS option was corrected to avoid using the BULKRN option using ONSITE delta-T data when 02/28/2011

the ONSITE winds are missing and the reference winds are based on SURFACE data. Vertical rofiles of ONSITE temperature, sigma-theta, and sigma-w are also s ipped if the reference winds are based on SURFACE data. These changes are intended to avoid internal inconsistencies in the characterization of the boundary layer that may occur with some combinations of SURFACE and ONSITE data. 3. Corrected problems with time zone adjustments for cases with surface and onsite stations in different time zones. 4. Incorporated changes to properly handle ISHD surface files with the problem addressed on an interim basis by FIXISHD utility, which is no longer required. -- Enhancements: 1. Enhancements were made to the heirarchy for handling missing station pressure to ma e full use of other available data and of user-specified station elevations for SURFACE stations and ONSITE stations, if available. 2. Increased the maximum record length for the runstream input file from 80 to 132 characters, removed any limit on the record length for ONSITE data records, increased the maximum field length for filenames from 48 to 96, and allow for use of double quotes ( ) as field delimiters to support filenames with embedded spaces. 3. Several enhancements to provide more flexibility in selecting the most appropriate upper air sounding, including a new option for a user-specified window on upper air observation time, and an option for AERMET to automatically select the most appropriate sounding based on local sunrise. These enhancements allow AERMET to better utilize upper air data that occurs more frequently than twice-daily, including "pseudo" upper air data derived from gridded meteorological models or reanalysis data, if deemed to be appropriate in the future (note that use of gridded model outputs or reanalysis data in AERMET would be considered as an alternative modeling technique at the present time). These enhancements also provide better support for applications of AERMOD beyond the U.S. 4. Enhancement to allow the use of hourly-averaged winds derived from 1-minute ASOS wind data (TD-6405), generated by the new AERMINUTE program, which can improve the representativeness of airport wind data by providing hourly averages as well as filling in for many hours that are missing in the standard airport data archives due to calm or variable winds. 5. Adjustment of ASOS-based wind speeds (including winds derived from 1-minute ASOS data) by +0.5 not to account for the bias in reported ASOS wind speeds due to winds being truncated (rather than rounded) to whole nots. This includes changes to several subroutines to allow trac ing whether surface data are ASOS or observer-based across all three stages of data processing, and the inclusion of an ASOS 'flag' in the surface extraction and surface QA files. A database of ASOS commission dates has been included to allow AERMET to determine whether observations for a specific surface station are ASOS or not. The surface output file format has also been modified to include

a character string for each hour identifying whether the wind speeds have been adjusted or not to account for the truncation of the ASOS winds ('ADJ-' or 'NAD-') and whether the reference wind data is based on ONSITE, SURFACE or 1-MIN ASOS data (OS, SFC, or A1). 6. Several enhancements to the error handling and reporting related to processing ONSITE data, including an option to use FREE format to read the data and the option to specify missing data codes and upper/lower bounds for ONSITE data as REAL variables. 7. A new option/requirement incorporated in Stage 3 to specify a secondary set of surface characteristics for use when NWS winds are substituted for missing on-site winds using the SUBNWS option on the METPREP pathway. The primary set of surface characteristics is used when the reference wind is based on ONSITE data, and the secondary surface characteristics are used when SURFACE data are substituted for missing ONSITE data. This ensures that an appropriate surface roughness will be used depending on the location of the reference wind data. 8. New eywords, AERSURF and AERSURF2, were added to the METPREP pathway to allow users to specify an external file to read for surface characteristics, such as an AERSURFACE output file, rather than entering the data directly in the Stage 3 input file. 9. Enhancements to utilize on-site precipitation and relative humidity data, if available, in the surface output file. -- Miscellaneous: 1. The LOCATION eyword is no longer supported on the METPREP pathway in Stage 3. The METPREP LOCATION eyword had been used as the location for determining sunrise for convective mixing height calculations. This could result in somewhat different results using the same raw input data depending on the METPREP LOCATION, which are not meaningful. A non-fatal warning message is issued if the METPREP LOCATION eyword is found, and the location used to determine sunrise for convective mixing height calculations is based on the primary surface station location, i.e., the ONSITE station if available, or the SURFACE (NWS) station location. 2. Modified several subroutines to adjust the lower limit on the value of surface roughness length to 0.0001 meters, rather than 0.001 meters. This allows more flexibility for applications of AERMET for overwater or other very low roughness settings. 3. Several subroutines were modified to improve error handling and reporting for all three processing stages, including adjustments and improvements to the order and formatting of information in the report file. 4. Implemented some restrictions on the use of surface (NWS) data outside the valid range of dates based on the surface data format, i.e., data that have been reformatted from another file format. These restrictions affect cloud cover for ASOS data in the SCRAM or SAMSON format, since the SAMSON CDs and nearly all SCRAM surface data predated the advent of ASOS in 1992. The ASOS cloud covers

are set to missing for any SURFACE data input in the SCRAM or SAMSON format, since the interpretation and formatting of ASOS cloud cover codes cannot be verified in these cases. ***************** * IMPORTANT * ***************** This program will henceforth be identified by its name and a Julian date, i.e.: AERMET (dated 11059). Future changes to AERMET will be identified by an updated Julian date found at the beginning of the source code and followed by a reference to a SCRAM Model Change Bulletin (MCB#n) which will explain the nature and content of the changes. All Model Change Bulletins for this program will always be available for bac reference on this website. In the future, notification of changes (MCBs) to this program will be made in the SCRAM ALERTS section of this website.