What Happens to Nighttime Power Plant Emissions

Student Classification

Junior

Faculty Mentor

Solomon Bililign, Ph.D.

Department

Department of Physics

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Spring 2019

Disciplines

Physics

Abstract

The performance of the snow-ice enhanced Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-ice) model was evaluated for the simulation of a mesocyclone at a 5-km resolution for the period of October 23-25, 2017 over the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). MODIS data is acquired from two satellites known as Terra (MOD) and Aqua (MYD). Two types of MODIS products are used in the evaluation, including the Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Ice Surface Temperature (IST). Based on the availability of MODIS data, the hours used in the evaluation against MOD were 11.5-15.5 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) for daytime and 08-12 UTC for nighttime. In the evaluation against MYD, the daytime hours were 18-22 UTC and nighttime of 02-06 UTC due to different orbital times of the Aqua satellite. The LST product is configured on a 0.05 degree latitude/longitude climate-modeling grid (CMG), and the IST product is on a 4-km resolution Equal Area Scalable Earth Grid (EASE-Grid). Both of the two products are combined to the WRF-ice domain using the closest point interpolation method for further verification. Comparisons among surface temperatures from MODIS MOD, MYD, as well as WRF-ice during the simulation period showed significant differences between the MOD and MYD land surface temperature. For this reason, additional quality assurance was added to fine tune the MODIS LST used for the evaluation. However still more discrepancies were found in the WRF-ice evaluation against MOD, either excessive warm or cold conditions. Furthermore, MODIS is not able to provide data over cloud covered area. Future research and studies on cloud interference within MODIS products would be beneficial to the user community to understand how more quality control could accurately depict the data taken from each tile grid over a given region.

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