The National Environmental Model and Analysis Center and Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems are implementing a haze forecasting system for the Great Smokey Mountains National Park as part of an outreach program managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The purpose of the system is to allow visitors and prospective visitors to the park to view the modeled haze forecast for selected locations in the park.

The system will also allow visitors to interact with the system to see the benefit of reductions in energy use on the vistas they see. By using an existing commercial production numerical ozone forecasting system, RTOFS, as a basis, the haze forecasting could be added as an incremental process. The numerical air quality model is MAQSIP-RT coupled with EPA's AE3 aerosol model. The air quality model is driven by meteorological inputs from MM5 and by emissions from SMOKE. The domain covered is the Eastern United States with nested coverage over the GSMNP.

Sensitivity coefficients for energy reduction scenarios provided by the DOE EERE were developed based on historical modeling for each particulate matter component. The sensitivity coefficients were then classified meteorologically so that the proper coefficient could be used for prospective cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of the energy reduction in benefitting the views seen.

This paper describes the numerical modeling system and the tools for public interaction with the modeling system outputs.