Smoke Trails | Green Energy News

April 7, 2002 – Vol.7 No.2

SMOKE TRAILS.

When I fly on a commercial airliner I am always amazed at how far smoke trails from power plants, factories or fires can be visually followed above the landscape - miles and miles, crossing state, and obviously national borders.

Following a pollution trail is possible by airplane, but a more inexpensive way to do it is with computer modeling.

CSIRO Atmospheric Research is now offering a new version of The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) software. The software allows for the tracking of emissions from cities, industrial sites such as power plants, line sources such as roads or flight paths (such as the airplane I might be on), or even individual homes.

TAPM V2 takes into effect meteorology, the effect of buildings that may change the direction of the flow of air pollution and allows for the input of independent observations into the modeling. The software was developed for industries, government, energy and environmental consulting. The previous version has been sold in 11 countries. Visit CSIRO at http://www.csiro.au/ .