Abstract
Concentration variability in the fast-response tracer dataset for continuous, near-surface, point source releases in the urban core from the Joint Urban 2003 field study is analyzed. Concentration variability for conditionally and unconditionally sampled time series is characterized by probability densities, concentration fluctuation intensity, skewness, and kurtosis. Significant day-night differences in plume dispersion are observed. Relative to daytime, nighttime plumes were more likely to have reduced concentration fluctuation intensities, higher normalized surface concentrations, suppressed vertical mixing, and a greater prevalence of Gaussian-like distributions rather than log-normal or mixed mode distributions. This was in spite of the similar stability and turbulence conditions in the urban core for day and night. The potential roles of flow meander and thermal stability in explaining these differences are examined. Probability densities of concentration are found to be a strong function of fluctuation intensity. There are few differences in probability densities between day and night when classified by fluctuation intensity. There are no appreciable differences between conditional and unconditional probability densities and only small differences between conditional and unconditional sampling statistics relative to the larger differences usually observed in more homogeneous settings. Fluctuation intensity, skewness, and kurtosis are higher for the daytime experiments, and closer to the source, but show little difference between conditional and unconditional results over most of their range of values. The log-normal distribution provides a better overall fit to a broader range of the dataset than the exponential or clipped-normal distributions.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to acknowledge the efforts of the many people who contributed to the execution of the JU03 study and made possible the analyses contained in this manuscript. These include Debbie Lacroix, Neil Hukari, Randy Johnson, Shane Beard, Tom Strong, Dianne Hoover, Mark Hoover, David George, Camille Erwin, Sean Eldredge, and Ryan Walker from ARLFRD; Jerry Allwine and Julia Flaherty from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Joe Shinn and Frank Gouveia and support staff from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Donnie Storwald, Jim Bowers, and support staff from Dugway Proving Ground; Leo Stockham of Northrop Grumman; and Shankar Rao and Bruce Hicks for their critique of the manuscript. We also thank the City Engineer Paul Brum and JC Reiss and other staff members of the public works department for the logistical support they provided. This work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, and under contract MIPR3ADPG87013 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
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Sponsorship: This work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, and under contract MIPR3ADPG87013 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Finn, D., Clawson, K.L., Carter, R.G. et al. Analysis of Urban Atmosphere Plume Concentration Fluctuations. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 136, 431–456 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9510-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9510-3