92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Sunday, 22 January 2012
Air Chemistry Interactions with Mesoscale Sea-Breeze and Outflow Boundaries in the Edgewood, MD Area
Hall E (New Orleans Convention Center )
Michael Charnick, Millersville University, Millersville, PA

Millersville University's role in the DISCOVER-AQ research project provided the opportunity to observe local air chemistry trends in the Edgewood, MD area. Throughout the month of July 2011, many interactions between pollutants and mesoscale weather systems were observed and recorded in fine detail, thanks to many high-resolution instruments in operation at the site. These included, but were not limited to: A tethered balloon system producing boundary layer atmospheric profiles of standard meteorological parameters as well as Ozone, Nitrogen Oxides, and Particulate Matter, surface trace gas analyzers measuring Ozone, Nitrogen Oxides, Sulfer Dioxide, and Carbon Monoxide, an acoustic SODAR measuring boundary layer atmospheric parameters, and a 10Hz high resolution surface flux tower measuring fluxes of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other meteorological parameters. Used in tandem with local radar and satellite data available online, many interesting events were observed. This poster will examine two of those events, and attempt to draw a few basic conclusions about how and why they occurred. The first will examine a sea breeze propagation across the Delmarva peninsula on July 14th which passed over the lowest 200 meters over our site. The second will look into an outflow boundary that pushed out from a nearby afternoon thunderstorm during the afternoon of July 22nd, resulting in an interesting distribution of pollutants over our site. This poster will examine our findings.

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