Uses of upper-air meteorological data for air quality data analysis and modeling

A series of regional-scale field studies have been conducted in recent years to study meteorological and photochemical processes that lead to ozone episodes (periods of high ozone concentration) and other types of reduced air quality. An important component of these studies has been to increase the temporal and spatial resolution of aloft measurements of winds, temperatures, and related parameters over those provided by the twice-per-day National Weather Service (NWS) balloon sounding network. Supplemental upper-air stations deployed for these studies have been equipped with a variety of observing systems, including rawinsonde sounding systems, Doppler radar wind profilers, radio acoustic sounding systems (RASS, for temperature profiling), Doppler acoustic sounders (sodar), tethersondes, lidar, and aircraft-based measurements, among others. The upper-air data collected during these programs have been used.