Along-wind dispersion of puffs released in a built-up urban area

The SF6 gas tracer observations for puffs released near the ground during the Joint Urban 2003 (JU2003) urban dispersion experiment in Oklahoma City have been analysed. The JU2003 observations, at distances of about 100–1,100 m from the source, show that, at small times, when the puff is still within the built-up downtown domain, the standard deviation of the concentration time series, σt, is influenced by the initial puff spread due to buildings near the source and by hold-up in the wakes of large buildings at the sampler locations. This effect is parameterised by assuming an initial σto of about 42 s, leading to a comprehensive similarity formula: σt = 42 + 0.1t. The second term, 0.1t, is consistent with an earlier similarity relation, σt = 0.1t, derived from puff observations in many experiments over rural terrain. The along-wind dispersion coefficient, σx, is assumed to equal σtu, in which u is the puff speed calculated as the distance from the source to the sampler, x, divided by the time after the release that the maximum concentration is observed at the sampler. σx can be expressed as σx = σxo + 0.14x, with the initial σxo of 45 m. This initial σxo agrees with the suggestion of an initial plume spread of about 40 m, made by McElroy and Pooler from analysis of the 1960s’ St. Louis urban dispersion experiment. The puff speeds, u, are initially only about 20% of the observed wind speed, averaged over about 80 street-level and rooftop anemometers in the city, but approach the mean observed wind speed as the puffs grow vertically. The scatter in the σt data is about ± a factor of two or three at any given travel time. The maximum σt is about 250 s, and the maximum duration of the puff over the sampler, Dt, sometimes called the retention time, is about 1,100 s or 18 min for these puffs and distances.