Influence of Landscape Variability on Atmospheric Dispersion

Abstract

Using idealized distributions of surface moisture, it is shown that with a significant synoptic prevailing flow over these regions of surface variability, dispersion is generally enhanced over heterogeneous surfaces as compared to horizontally homogeneous conditions. The importance of the heterogeneity becomes less, however, as the large scale wind speed increases and/or the spatial scale of the heterogeneities become less. This work also clearly demonstrates that the use of Gaussian regulatory models in areas of landscape variability is inappropriate.