Table of Contents - The Atmospheric Studies Group at TRC

Section 7: Prognostic Meteorological Interfaces
7.6 CALTAPM Preprocessor
CALTAPM operates on the output from CSIRO’s Division of Atmospheric Research, The Air Pollution
Model, (TAPM). It outputs all the TAPM 3D variables: wind speed, wind direction, temperature, relative
humidity, potential temperature and turbulent kinetic energy. It also outputs the 2D variables total solar
radiation, net radiation, sensible heat flux, evaporative heat flux, friction velocity, potential virtual
temperature scale, potential temperature scale, convective velocity scale, mixing height, surface
temperature and rainfall. Table 7-32 lists the variables extracted using CALTAPM which are output to the
3D.DAT file format.
CALTAPM reads and interprets all information contained in the TAPM configuration input file headers
(physical options, dates, grid size and location, etc.). TAPM requires a grid centre coordinate of latitude
and longitude corresponding to the centre of the chosen grid domains. TAPM uses a Cartesian system
where the x is positive from west to east and y is positive from south to north and specifies the centre of
the local system with respect to the latitude and longitude of the grid centre. CALTAPM assumes the
TAPM coordinate system is UTM and Datum of WGS-84 and uses this system directly in the 3D data
file. Like CALMET TAPM uses a non-staggered horizontal coordinate system (see Figure 7-3) and a
terrain-following vertical coordinate system. In the horizontal, all variables are defined at the center of
each grid cell and the first level is 10m. The vertical levels of TAPM are used directly with no
transformation to sigma levels in the 3D data file.
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