STUDY OF IMPACT OF SURFACE CHARACTERSTICS ON AMBIENT AIR CONCENTRATION BY USING AERMOD: A REVIEW

Environmental Engineering

In India, AERMOD has been added to the list of recommended model for a regulatory application like Environment Impact Assessment and Source apportionment studies by CPCB in 2008. AERMOD is also recommended model in USA and Australia since 2005 for air quality modeling purpose. It is an updated version of ISCST-3 (Industrial Source Complex Short Term-3). AERMOD is one of the popular Gaussian type air dispersion model which is based on Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) and Similarity relationship theory. AERMOD requires as input surface characteristics like Albedo(amount of incident radiation reflected back to the surface), Bowen ratio (amount of moisture present in the surface) and Surface roughness length (height of obstacles where log mean horizontal velocity is considered practically zero). AERMOD is sensitive to change in surface characteristics. In India, absence of availability of site specific surface parameters, model calculates value of such parameters itself, which may be differ from actual value. Thus model prediction results for ground level concentration (GLC) are not much accurate. To improve model performance it is required to measure actual land use parameters and to evaluate its impact on ground level concentration. This paper shows how surface characteristics affect the ground level concentration(GLC).

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