An article that summarizes the new lines of thinking on irreversible (rather than equilibrium) SOA formation.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/24/1119909109.full.pdf+html

Forgot about the blog for awhile. Seeing if I can still post, and if the auto-email comes to me based on my new post. We had an excellent group meeting today where we discussed the benefits of the Helium parallel cluster. We also discussed CGRER storage on hail (for archival materials that cannot be downloaded or regenerated in a week), vapor, and RAID zero local drives. We discussed the creation of a model repository on hail for documented versions of important codes, including major preprocessing and postprocessing tools. Contact Jaemeen, Jeremie, or Pablo about the parallel cluster. Contact Jeremie or Scott about storage and model repository.

High Performance Summer School Website

Hi all,

Here is a link to the HPC summer school website. It has all lectures, exercises and useful links.

http://www.physics.uiowa.edu/~ghowes/teach/ihpc11/index.html

pablo's fix to diffusion in WRF-CHEM

Pablo sent this by email, I am posting to the blog

Hi,

According to what we talk in the seminar, here is the correction to the WRF-Chem code in order to avoid too much vertical diffusion on stable conditions:

On "dry_dep_driver.F" found oin the "chem" folder, comment the following lines and recompile:

if (sf_urban_physics .eq. 0) then
if (e_co(i,kts,j) .gt. 0) then
ekmfull(kts:kts+10) = max(ekmfull(kts:kts+10),1.)
endif
if (e_co(i,kts,j) .gt. 200) then
ekmfull(kts:kte/2) = max(ekmfull(kts:kte/2),2.)
endif
endif

post from Jaemeen on geodesic sphere specification

Hi all,  In MCIP 3.6, IOAPI_ISPH 20 (a=6370000 meter for WRF outputs) can be used. The problem is that, MCIP actually doesn't use this setting (MCIP FAQS claims so), while SMOKE heavily depends on this setting. So it is better to run SMOKE with this sphere as well to get benefits from new sphere definition.  The default SMOKE IOAPI_ISPH is 19 (based on ArcInfo sphere. About 1km larger a than the WRF sphere. This is neither the MM5 nor WRF sphere) and if you set IOAPI_ISPH as 20 in SMOKE2.5 scripts, SMOKE won't recognize it correctly, since SMOKE is compiled with previous versions of IOAPI-NETCDF libraries.  I compiled SMOKE 2.5 with ioapi 3.0-netcdf 3.6.2 and SMOKE recognize the sphere 20 correctly.  All default SMOKE spatial allocation files are based on the sphere 19, so if you want, you need to create your own surrogates using the sphere 20.  Difference between the sphere 19 and 20 is minimal (less than 400 meters in the Lambert projection in LA, ~100meter in Illinois ), so it shouldn't cause large differences in your modeling results unless you use 1.3km resolutions.  I am anticipating that at some point, I may need to run 1.3km grids over Chicago area for on-road mobile sources, so I updated spatial surrogates for my domains to maintain continuity.  Sangrin and Charlie,  do you want me to change the Longbeach related SMOKE files as well?  I guess it's not critical since 4km will be the finest resolution in your case.    Cheers,  Jaemeen

Iowa DNR Survey on Regulatory PM2.5 Modeling

As part of the Modeling/Ambient Air Monitoring subcommittee’s work on addressing modeling and ambient air monitoring issues related to the implementation of the new PM2.5 ambient air quality standard that were previously identified by the workgroup, the subcommittee put together a survey to find out how other state and local air quality programs are, or are planning to, address several key issues. The National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) distributed the survey to state and local air agencies at the request of Iowa DNR. The responses from 26 state and local agencies were compiled by the subcommittee and are available at http://www.iowadnr.gov/air/prof/meet_wg/pm25/maam_sub.html . Please contact me if you have questions about the survey.

Setting a WRF domain correctly in MCIP 3.6 outputs

Since WRF does not follow standard projection definitions for Lambert conformal Conic projection,
MCIP (pre-processor of meteorology data for creating CMAQ inputs) often fails to get proper definition from WRF outputs.
EPA uses LC as a standard projection for CMAQ and SMOKE, so this could cause you a headache if you want to combine WRF-CMAQ together.
Here are some tips to get proper MCIP outputs using WRF.

1. Define WRF projection by yourself
Instead of using "domain wizard", define the WRF projection in a standard way. EPA's LC definitions are:
True lat 1; 33.00
True lat 2: 45.00
Reference latitude: 40.00
Reference longitude: -97.00
Center latitude: 40.00
xorigin : -2736000
yorigin : -2088000

2. Set WRF_LC_REF_LAT in run.mcip as 40.00

3. Edit headers of MCIP outputs use "m3edhdr"
- MCIP creates many output files, so it is easier to use a cshell script to edit them.
Here is the example. Note that GRIDDOT2D and METDOT3D files are shifted by a half cell size

#======================================
#!/bin/csh -f
set xorigin = -2736000
set yorigin = -2088000
set xorigin2 = -2754000
set yorigin2 = -2106000

foreach fname( GRIDBDY2D GRIDCRO2D METBDY3D METCRO2D METCRO3D )

ln ${j_outdir}/${fname}_${gridname}_$j_mcip_extn met_in -sf
m3edhdr << EOF
met_in
1
33
45
-97
-97
40
2
$xorigin
$yorigin
$cell
$cell
10
EOF
end #foreach fname( GRIDBDY2D GRIDCRO2D METBDY3D METCRO2D METCRO3D )

foreach fname( GRIDDOT2D METDOT3D )

ln ${j_outdir}/${fname}_${gridname}_$j_mcip_extn met_in -sf
m3edhdr << EOF
met_in
1
33
45
-97
-97
40
2
$xorigin2
$yorigin2
$cell
$cell
10
EOF
end #foreach fname( GRIDDOT2D METDOT3D )