Development and Application of the High resolution VOC Atmospheric Chemistry in Canopies (Hi-VACC) Model

We have been working to develop a new post-processing model - High resolution VOC Atmospheric Chemistry in Canopies (Hi-VACC) - which resolves the dispersion and chemistry of reacting chemical species given their emission rates from the vegetation and soil, driven by high resolution meteorological forcing and wind fields from various high resolution atmospheric regional and large-eddy simulations. Hi-VACC reads in fields of pressure, temperature, humidity, air density, short-wave radiation, wind (3-D u, v and w components) and sub-grid-scale turbulence that were simulated by a high resolution atmospheric model. This meteorological forcing data is provided as snapshots of 3-D fields. Presently, the advection-diffusion portion of the model is fully developed, and we have tested it using a number of RAMS-based Forest Large Eddy Simulation (RAFLES) runs. Here, we present results from utilizing Hi-VACC in a few different contexts where it performs scalar dispersion well. These include simulations of smoke dispersion from a theoretical forest fire in a domain in The Pine Barrens in New Jersey, as well as simulations to test the effects of heat flux on a scalar plume dispersing over a vegetative windbreak in an agricultural setting. Additionally, we show initial results from testing the coupled chemistry component of Hi-VACC. One of the primary benefits of Hi-VACC is that users of other models can utilize this tool with only minimal work on their part — processing their output fields into the appropriate HI-VACC input format. We have developed our model such that for whatever atmospheric model is being used with it, a MATLAB function must be written to extract the necessary information from the output files of that model and shape it into the proper format. This is the only model-specific work required. As such, this sort of smoke dispersion modeling performed by Hi-VACC – as well as its other capabilities – can be easily performed in other locations and conditions provided simulations from an atmospheric model are available.