Using radar wind profilers and RASS data to calculate power plant plume rise and transport

As the number of 915-MHz radar wind profilers and radio acoustic sounding systems (RASS) increases, their number of uses also increases. These systems have demonstrated particular utility in air quality studies and, more specifically, in complex terrain. One data set from the radar profilers that has not, to date, been utilized to any large extent is represented by the temperature profiles derived from the RASS. Normally, these profiles represent a 5-min average every hour with a height resolution of about 60 m, a minimum range of about 100 m, and a maximum range of about 1.5 km, although this varies substantially with meterological conditions. Such profiles have several potential applications. Among them are determinations of mixing height and stability. In this work, we use the stability, along with the hour-averaged wind profiles, to estimate plume rise heights at a power plant site in Laughlin, Nevada, about 200 km south of Lake Mead. The profiles are first stratified according to season and synoptic categories so that the calculated plume rise heights could be separated by background transport conditions. The data were taken during Project Measurement of Haze and Visual Effects (MOHAVE), which took place in 1992. This project is briefly discussedmore » in the next section, along with the instrumentation and data used in this study.« less