Meteorological Input for a Three Dimensional Medium Range Air Quality Model

In the early fifties the first attempts have been made to calculate the dispersion of air pollutants. Most, if not all calculations, were based on the so-called “Gaussian plume model”. Due to the restrictions of this model, dispersion calculations could only be made over distances ranging from 1–50 km, while reliable predictions of ground level concentrations could but be obtained for average values over a period of at least two months. The conditions which limited the applicability of the Gaussian plume model were the uniformity of the wind velocity and the homogeneity of the turbulence.