MODELING WIND FIELDS IN MAQS

MAQS is the Metropolitan Air Quality Study, a multi-million dollar sci entific investigation of photochemical smog and fine particle pollutio n in the major urban and industrial area of New South Wales on the eas t coast of Australia. The study area included Newcastle/Hunter Valley region, the Sydney basin, and the Wollongong/Illawarra region. We have extended and applied the detailed prognostic numerical air pollution transport and dispersion model, LADM, to several simulations of local and inter-regional air pollution events for the MAQS region. The inves tigation highlighted (1) the large uncertainty in specifying surface s ynoptic meteorological data on high pollution days, (2) the ability of LADM to predict well the local winds and temperatures, even without a ssimilation of observational data into the model, (3) the need to inco rporate observations of surface and upper air winds to give accurate a ir trajectories, (4) that days conducive to sea-breeze conditions are the key to the meteorology of high pollution in the MAQS region, and ( 5) that poor dispersion in the Sydney basin also implies inter-regiona l transport: from the Newcastle/Hunter Valley region to parts of Sydne y, or from much of Sydney to the Illawarra. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevie r Science Ltd