The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) and its predecessor, the National Dry Deposition Network (NDDN), as national air quality and meteorological monitoring networks. Both CASTNET and NDDN were designed to measure concentrations of sulfur and nitrogen gases and particles and to estimate dry deposition using an inferential model. The design was based on the concept that atmospheric dry deposition flux could be estimated as the product of a measured air pollutant concentration and a modeled deposition velocity (Vd). The multi-layer model (MLM), the computer model used to simulate dry deposition, requires information on meteorological conditions and vegetative cover as model input. The MLM calculates hourly Vd for each pollutant, but any missing meteorological data for an hour renders Vd missing for that hour. Because of percent completeness requirements for aggregating data for long-term estimates, annual deposition rates for some sites are not always available primarily because of missing or invalid meteorological input data. In this work, three methods for replacing missing on-site measurements are investigated. These include (1) using historical values of deposition velocity or (2) historical meteorological measurements from the site being modeled or (3) current meteorological data from nearby sites to substitute for missing inputs and thereby improve data completeness for the network’s dry deposition estimates. Results for a CASTNET site used to test the methods show promise for using historical measurements of weekly average meteorological parameters.
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