NARSTO PAC2001 NRC-IAR Convair 580 Particle Count, Ozone, Meteorological Data

A typical flight covered the valley in eight meridional legs, approximately equally spaced, with three of them directly over the ground sites Slocan Park (SP), Langley Ecole Lochiel (LEL), and Sumas Eagle Ridge (SER). East-west flight tracks were flown north and south of the Fraser River, covering most of the urban centers of the valley to probe the urban-suburban-rural gradient, with additional East-West tracks over the North shore lakes to help understand the valley flow situation.

The remote sensing was based on aerosol backscattering using upward- and downward-looking LIDARs at the 1064 nm wavelength with a depolarization channel (Strawbridge and Snyder, 2004a). The profiles were obtained during aircraft spirals, specifically located at the western and southern boundaries of the domains of air quality models Urban Airshed Model Variable Grid (UAM-V ) and Model 3/Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) and were intended as the input as boundary conditions for further modeling.

The Convair mission flights covered an area with boundaries roughly corresponding to the model domain of Model 3/CMAQ application to the region, with the eastern boundary at 121.52' 30 W and the western boundary at 123.50' 13 W and extended from 48.30' N to 49.30' N over the mountain tops. On August 26 and August 29, night missions were flown from approximately 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. the next morning, primarily to map the nighttime movement of the urban plume in the main and secondary valleys (Strawbridge and Snyder, 2004b).

The ground site overflights provided an assessment of the vertical thermal structure and the extent of particle spatial distribution over the sites. The Pacific 2001 Air Quality Study (PAC2001) was conducted from 1 August to 31 September 2001 in the Lower Fraser Valley (LFV), British Columbia, Canada. The study consisted of individual research projects organized to address several issues on ambient PM and ozone that are important to policy makers.

A special issue of Atmospheric Environment [Vol. 38(34), Nov 2004] described specific study objectives (Li, 2004) and presented a series of results papers from the field study. Thre were five ground sampling sites during the study, which included: Cassiar Tunnel, Slocan Park, Langley Ecole Lochiel, Sumas Eagle Ridge, and Golden Ears Provincial Park. Aloft measurements were taken from a Convair 580 and a Cessna 188.

Selected measurement data were compiled for each site and aircraft and are archived as site-specific data sets. North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone (NARSTO), which has since disbanded, was a public/private partnership, whose membership spanned across government, utilities, industry, and academe throughout Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The primary mission was to coordinate and enhance policy-relevant scientific research and assessment of tropospheric pollution behavior; activities provide input for science-based decision-making and determination of workable, efficient, and effective strategies for local and regional air-pollution management.

Data products from local, regional, and international monitoring and research programs are still available.