Analysis of Concentration Fluctuations from Lidar Observations of Atmospheric Plumes

Abstract

A series of nearly instantaneous vertical cross sections of power-plant plume concentrations obtained by both airborne and ground-based lidar systems for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Plume Model Validation and Development Project have been analyzed. By statistically resampling the data, values of the ratio of the ensemble rms concentration fluctuation, σc, to the ensemble mean concentration, c?, near the center of the plumes are found to vary from 0.2 to 4. More importantly, it is found that the normalized probability distribution function can be well represented as that resulting from a Gaussian distribution with any nonrealizable negative tail replaced by a delta function, representing intermittency at zero.