Summer Episodes of Pollution Dispersion over the Coastal Area of Israel - A Numerical Study

The rising need to control industrial emissions over urban areas in Israel and to monitor the dispersion of pollutants (Graber, 1981) has stimulated extensive experimental and simulation studies in this field (Graber et al., 1984). The dependence of the dispersion of pollutants on mesoscale meteorological conditions was investigated with the aid of a recently developed model of air pollution transport over Israel (Tokar et al., 1993) and a mesometeorological model based on the PSU/NCAR mesoscale numerical model known as MM4 (Anthes et al., 1987). This model is suitable for forecasting flows with characteristic wavelengths of 10 to 2500 km under a variety of meteorological conditions. The models were implemented over a 324×270 km region with the Hadera power plant -the largest in Israel - at its center. Topography was included in the model. The MM4 model with 15 height levels and 6 km horizontal resolution was adapted to fit the Israeli conditions. The pollution transport model was applied for a smaller domain of 108×90 km with 2 km of horizontal grid spacing. The transport model uses the MM4 calculations as its input data.