Observations of plume dispersion in complex terrain by NOAA lidar during the 1984 Full Scale Plume Study at Tracy Power Plant

The NOAA Wave Propagation Laboratory operated a lidar as part of the Full Scale Plume Study conducted in August, 1984 at Tracy Power Plant near Reno, Nevada. This was the final experiment of the Complex Terrain Model Development project under the direction of EPA. The lidar performed cross-sectional scans of an oil fog tracer released from a 91 m stack during stable nighttime conditions in complex terrain. The experiment site and the lidar*s operational configuration are described. Methods used in reducing the lidar data are also presented. Data are available on digital magnetic tape for 4519 individual plume cross-sections and 433 hour-averaged plume cross-sections. The formats of these archive tapes are documented here. The plume data include horizontal and vertical profiles of oil fog distribution, locations of the plume centroid, and the second moments (ay and crz) of the profiles. Computer-generated graphs of the hour-averaged 2-D oil fog distributions and of parameters from the individual plume scans are also available. Examples of these are presented.