Long Range Transport of Air Pollutants on the Synoptic Scale

Abstract

Long range transport (LRT) of air pollutants has in recent years become increasingly more important, in part, because of the technical challenge of the current applications (e.g. acidic deposition, visibility impairment, and source attribution issues), and in part, because of the growing awareness of the technical difficulties of providing definitive models. This overview paper reviews the evidence for an accelerated-diffusion regime for puffs and plumes; some of the current LRT diffusion formulations in view of the summary information; the sensitivity of LRT diffusion solutions to the potential range of conditions; the potential for inherent errors in current simplified, but commonly used, trajectory estimates; some avenues emerging from research for avoiding these accumulating errors in trajectory estimates. In addition, the most recently developed techniques from applied mathematics hold promising potential for use in global pollutant budgets. Some of the salient dilemmas of the long range transport problem are highlighted.