Effects of point source emission heights in WRF–STILT: a step towards exploiting nocturnal observations in models

Maier, Fabian; Gerbig, Christoph; Levin, Ingeborg; Super, Ingrid; Marshall, Julia; Hammer, Samuel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-5391-2022

Articles | Volume 15, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-5391-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-5391-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 13

Model evaluation paper

|

14 Jul 2022

Model evaluation paper |

| 14 Jul 2022

Effects of point source emission heights in WRF–STILT: a step towards exploiting nocturnal observations in models

Fabian Maier, Christoph Gerbig, Ingeborg Levin, Ingrid Super, Julia Marshall, and Samuel Hammer

Data sets

Heidelberg integrated samples 2018-2020 and pseudo power plant experiment results [Data] Fabian Maier, Christoph Gerbig, Ingeborg Levin, Ingrid Super, Julia Marshall, and Samuel Hammer https://doi.org/10.11588/data/CK3ZTX

Model code and software

Calculating ffCO2 contributions from nearby point sources with STILT surface source and volume source influence approach Fabian Maier, Christoph Gerbig, and Thomas Frank Koch https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5911518

Short summary

We show that the default representation of point source emissions in WRF–STILT leads to large overestimations when modelling fossil fuel CO₂ concentrations for a 30 m high observation site during stable atmospheric conditions. We therefore introduce a novel point source modelling approach in WRF-STILT that takes into account their effective emission heights and results in a much better agreement with observations.