NAME

NAME atmospheric pollution dispersion model was first developed by the UK's Met Office in 1986 after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, which demonstrated the need for a method that could predict the spread and deposition of radioactive gases or material released into the atmosphere. The acronym, NAME, originally stood for the Nuclear Accident ModEl. The Met Office has revised and upgraded the model over the years and it is now used as a general purpose dispersion model. The current version is known as the NAME III (Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment) model. NAME III is currently operational and it will probably completely replace the original NAME model sometimes in 2006. Features and capabilities of NAME NAME (in its current NAME III version) is a Lagrangian air pollution dispersion model for short range to global range scales. It employs 3-dimensional meteorological data provided by the Met Office's Unified National Weather Prediction Model. Random walk techniques using empirical turbulence profiles are utilized to represent turbulent mixing. In essence, NAME follows the 3-dimensional trajectories of parcels of the pollution plume and computes pollutant concentrations by Monte Carlo methods — that is, by direct simulation rather than solving equations.