Generic Guidance and Optimum Model Settings for the CALPUFF ...

4.3.1 Graphical Evaluation
Graphical display methods are easily accessed through TRC’s CALPRO Graphical User Interface
which has its own graphical display capability called CALVIEW. CALVIEW displays plots of
terrain, land use, concentrations, wind vectors, mixing heights, precipitation and other
meteorological fields. CALVIEW also has options to display animations.
Evaluation by the user has to occur at every stage of the model process
Calview –
Step 1. Whilst setting up your CALMET model domain, use CALVIEW to display the model
domain, terrain contours, Land use data, and, allow surface and upper air stations to be plotted
onto the map. This step is important to make sure;
(a) Your model domain is sufficiently large enough to encompass any terrain
features that may be near or alongside the model boundary which may affect
the local flow conditions over the domain.
(b) the location of the surface and upper air stations are in the locations you
expect them to be
(c) Check the Landuse data and make sure no missing data, incorrect Land Use
categories.
Step 2. Once CALMET and its postprocessor package PRTMET have been executed use
CALVIEW to plot the hourly wind fields, mixing heights, stability fields etc. Make sure;
(d) The wind fields look as you would expect them to be. Terrain effects should
be noticeable in calm stable conditions during the nighttime.
(e) Look at the upper level winds and consider whether they are realistic with
respect to the underlying terrain, above the terrain height wind flow is
expected to reflect dominant southwesterly and westerly winds.
(f) Check the mixing height to make sure it is consistent with what you would
expect especially where large water bodies over land are involved
Wind Roses –
The Wind Rose Module computes and then generates wind rose plots which indicate the direction
from which wind speed events are coming. The percentage of a range of wind speed for each
wind direction is displayed using a concentric scale of frequencies (i.e., each circular ring
corresponds to a particular frequency, in percent). The wind rose plotter module processes
various formats of meteorological data including a CALMET binary data file, surface and upper
air data file as well as a 3D.DAT file.
Wind roses provide one of the most powerful graphical evaluation procedures of evaluating wind
speed and direction at specific site locations of both model input data and model output data.
Wind roses give an information laden view of how wind speed and direction are typically
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