Simulating atmospheric tracer concentrations for spatially distributed receptors: updates to the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport model's R interface (STILT-R version 2)

Abstract

Abstract. The Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport (STILT) model is comprised of a compiled Fortran executable that carries out advection and dispersion calculations as well as a higher-level code layer for simulation control and user interaction, written in the open-source data analysis language R. We introduce modifications to the STILT-R code base with the aim to improve the model's applicability to fine-scale (< 1 km) trace gas measurement studies. The changes facilitate placement of spatially distributed receptors and provide high-level methods for single- and multi-node parallelism. We present a kernel density estimator to calculate influence footprints and demonstrate improvements over prior methods. Vertical dilution in the hyper near field is calculated using the Lagrangian decorrelation timescale and vertical turbulence to approximate the effective mixing depth. This framework provides a central source repository to reduce code fragmentation among STILT user groups as well as a systematic, well-documented workflow for users. We apply the modified STILT-R to light-rail measurements in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, and discuss how results from our analyses can inform future fine-scale measurement approaches and modeling efforts.