NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS AND DIAGNOSTIC STUDIES
RELATING METEOROLOGY TO ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
DURING TRACE-P

Henry E. Fuelberg
Department of Meteorology
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4520
(850) 644-6466
fuelberg@met.fsu.edu

We plan a series of research tasks that will relate meteorological conditions over the TRACE-P domain to the chemical measurements that will be obtained.  Specifically, we will analyze the in situ aircraft-derived chemical data as well as imagery from the MOPITT and MODIS instruments on the recently launched Terra satellite.  To integrate the chemical data with meteorological processes, we will employ both diagnostic meteorological data from the national centers and high resolution numerical meteorological simulations utilizing the MM5 model.  Finally, Prof. Fuelberg will serve as the DC-8 Mission Meteorologist during the field portion of the experiment.

Our overall goal is to characterize the origins and transports of air masses in which the TRACE-P aircraft will operate, understand the context of the in situ data with respect to larger scale satellite imagery, and integrate the chemical data with meteorological conditions using high resolution modeling.  The research will have four specific components:

1. Determine the origins and paths of air parcels encountered along individual DC-8 and P-3B flight tracks during TRACE-P to  understand the histories of important chemical constituents.  Trajectories will be calculated for this purpose.  Results will be compared with those from climatology,
   
2. Relate flight level chemical measurements to origins of the air,
   
3. Perform mesoscale numerical simulations to determine the meteorological processes responsible for patterns of carbon monoxide, aerosols, ozone, and methane that are observed in imagery from the MOPITT and MODIS instruments onboard the Terra satellite. The TRACE-P aircraft data will provide high resolution information about the image features revealed by Terra (i.e., fine scale details about vertical and horizontal distributions).  This research will indicate the context of the TRACE-P aircraft-derived chemical data with respect to the larger scale views provided by the satellite
   
4. Serve as DC-8 Mission Meteorologist during TRACE-P.