Evaluation of area source models to predict near ground level concentrations due to emissions released during agricultural applications

Abstract

The modeling of emissions to predict concentrations at downwind distances close to the area sources such as agricultural is of great interest for practical applications. In this study, three area source models used for agricultural sources - the Shear, the Parker, and the Smith models - are compared using two field data sets. Statistical performance measures are used to evaluate and compare the performance of the models. The evaluation results showed that the Shear model performed better than the Parker and the Smith models for all the near downwind distances under unstable conditions (B and C). The analysis of model algorithms indicate that the relatively better performance of the Shear model is due to the incorporation of a variation of wind speed and vertical eddy diffusivity (atmospheric turbulence) with height above the ground.