June 8, 2008
Going from Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups to Unhealthy for Everybody
We are really in for it in the Mid-Atlantic. Yesterday's heat wave continues at least Monday and the GASP animations show clearly what's happening.
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The GASP AOD panel on the left shows high AOD offshore but that it is recirculating back on-shore as the morning wears on. On the right the trajectory projections of where this haze mass is going is showing it moving eastward and that is clearly not happening. In these stagnation events, the flow is slow and since we are under a big high, it is circulating around in what used to be called a "Persistant Elevated Pollution Episode" (or a PEPE). NOAA's Forecast Guidance Loop for ozone shows the ozone moving off, but there are some odd features in this forecast that we are looking at. Clearly the ozone is highest over water, and that probably is due to the low mixing height over colder, water surfaces. This needs verification by data and we are working with NWS to analyse these heights. ELF is running (click the ELF-online tab on the right) and we will watch the PBL height over the next 48 hours.
The Terra pass this morning shows one source of much of the haze, the North Carolina fires. The smoke offshore is what is returning back to VA, MD, DE and PA. The numbers superimposed on the figure are the 3:00 temperatures in F from METAR in KML (Google Earth) format. This figure has sources from SSEC/UW and NOAA, as well as the copyright sources at the bottom of the image.
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Tomorrow, AIRNOw is projecting that the ozone level will reach the red indicator or Unhealthy for everybody. Of course, I have a round of golf booked so we'll see if we get that in or not. It is not good to be outside for extended periods. We were at the Lady's PGA tournament at Bulle Rock, MD, and the paramedics were very busy attending to people who were going down with heat prostration. Be careful out there.
Posted by Ray Hoff at June 8, 2008 1:07 PM | TrackBack