readme.txt

File contents

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Air Dispersion Modeling Team (ADMT) 
AERMET Meteorological Data Version 19191
April 2020

--- File naming convention ---

In each AERMET meteorological zip file, there will be either one year or five years of processed meteorological data for your county.
 
For minor new source review air permitting requirements, one year of meteorological data is generally sufficient.  The standard year for 
minor new source review permits modeling is 2016.   
 
There will be three pairs of pfl and sfc files for each county.  One pair for each roughness category.

There will be six pairs of pfl and sfc files for Harris and Travis Counties.  Meteorological datasets for two surface stations are available.
The applicant will determine the appropriate surface station for the project site.  Documentation on the choice of the surface station will be 
required to be submitted to the TCEQ as part of the air permits modeling review.  The documentation should include a review of the land use 
in the vicinity of the surface station and the project site.
 
The naming convention is:
 
Example:
 
Harris_IAHLCH16M.SFC
Harris_IAHLCH16M.PFL
 
The letters to the left of the underscore represent the county name.
The first three letters to the right of the underscore represent the surface station name:  IAH = Houston Intercontinental Airport, TX.
The next three letters represent the upper air station name: LCH = Lake Charles, LA.
The next two numbers represent the year of the met data: 16 = 2016
The last letter represents the roughness parameter used: 
  L = low roughness
  M = medium roughness
  H = high roughness

The counties.xls spreadsheet provides the albedo and the Bowen ratio for each county as well as information identifying the meteorological 
stations.

The applicant will determine the appropriate surface roughness parameter category for the project site.  Documentation on the choice 
of the surface roughness parameter category will be required to be submitted to the TCEQ as part of the air permits modeling review.


--- Sources of data ---   

1-minute Automated Surface Observing Stations (ASOS) wind data for the measurement sites were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) 
website for 2014-2018.

5-minute Automated Surface Observing Stations (ASOS) wind data for the measurement sites were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) 
website for 2014-2018.

Hourly surface data for the measurement sites were obtained from the NCDC Integrated Surface Database (ISD) for 2014-2018. 

Upper-air data were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Radiosonde 
Database for 2014-2018.

*Two counties (Crane and Ector) did not meet completeness for 2014 and 2017 and four counties (Loving, Reeves, Ward, and Winkler) did not meet completeness 
for 2017. To address this, the ADMT processed data using the years 2013 and 2019 for Crane and Ector counties and 2019 for Loving, Reeves, Ward, 
and Winkler counties and removed 2014 and 2017 from these counties as applicable.