Daily dispersion model calculations of the Kuwait oil fire smoke plume

The Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) provided daily forecasts of the position and spatial character of the Kuwait oil fire smoke plume to the NSF-coordinated research aircraft missions in the Persian Gulf. ARAC also provided daily plume dispersion products to various nations in the Persian Gulf region under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization for a period of nearly 5 months. Forecasted three dimensional winds were provided to ARAC from the US Air Force Global Weather Central`s Relocatable Wind Model (RWM). The RWM winds were spaced approximately 90 km in the horizontal and were located at the surface, 1000 ft., 2000 ft, 5000 ft and every 5000 ft up to 30,000 ft elevation. The forecast periods were 0, 6, 24, and 36 hours from both 0000 and 1200 UTC. A wind field model (MATHEW) corrected for terrain influences on the wind. The smoke plume was dispersed using a three dimensional particle-in-cell code (ADPIC) with buoyant plume rise capability. Multiple source locations were used to represent the burning oil fields. Improved estimates of the source term and emission factors for the smoke were incorporated into the ADPIC calculations as the field measurement data were made available.