Re-formulation of plume spread for near-surface dispersion

Recent concerns about effects of automobile emissions on the health of people living close to roads have motivated an examination of models to estimate dispersion in the surface boundary layer. During the development of a new line source dispersion model, RLINE (Snyder et al., 2013), analysis of data from a tracer field study led to a re-examination of near-surface dispersion resulting in new formulations for horizontal and vertical plume spread presented in this paper. The equations for vertical spread use the solution of the two-dimensional diffusion equation, in which the eddy diffusivity, based on surface layer similarity, is a function of surface micrometeorological variables such as surface friction velocity and Monin–Obukhov length. The horizontal plume spread equations are based on Eckmanʹs (1994) suggestion that plume spread is governed by horizontal turbulent velocity fluctuations and the vertical variation of the wind speed at mean plume height. Concentration estimates based on the proposed plume spread equations compare well with data from both the Prairie Grass experiment (Barad, 1958) as well as the recently conducted Idaho Falls experiment (Finn et al., 2010). One of the major conclusions of this study is that the plume spreads as well as the wind speed used to estimate concentrations in a dispersion model form a set of coupled variables.