The Operational Multi-scale Environmental model with Grid
Adaptivity (OMEGA) represents a significant departure from the
traditional methods used in numerical weather prediction and real-time
hazard prediction. The advanced numerical and adaptive grid generation
methods embodied in OMEGA have now been applied to hurricane simulation.
The OMEGA computational grid adapts to the evolving storm providing high
resolution in the general vicinity of the hurricane.
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Resolving the flow and pollutant concentrations at the highest possible resolution is of
paramount importance in atmospheric chemistry calculations especially when dealing
with chemical reactions in plumes. OMEGA is used to explore the modeling of pollutant plumes.
OMEGA has an embedded Atmospheric Dispersion Model (ADM). The ADM uses a puff
approach to disperse the pollutants. The particles are treated as centroids of growing
puffs, with the growth determined by the ambient turbulent characteristics. OMEGA also
features a particle diffusion algorithm using a Monte Carlo method with a
receptor-oriented concentration calculation algorithm.
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Coastal Meteorology poses several challenges to the NWP models. The complex coastline
generates thermally driven sea- and land-breezes. Also, in many coastal regions, the
growth of urban centers and changes in the land-use patterns around them change the
local forcings especially when the synoptic forcings are weak. OMEGA has been used to
simulate the local meteorology over the Chesapeake Bay region, in several weakly forced
situations.
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OMEGA is perfectly suited to perform global simulations. Rectilinear grids
have an inherent problem to represent the poles, which pose computational
singularities. Typically, a collar around the poles is omitted for global
calculations, or, if polar solutions are desired, the grid is rotated so
that the singularities appear elsewhere. OMEGA has the unique advantage
that the grid is immune to such problems.
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