Engineer Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory Research Physical Scientist Dr. Steven Peckham was recently awarded the 2016 Haagen-Smit Prize.
The Haagen-Smit Prize recognizes outstanding papers published in Atmospheric Environment and showcases the excellent science published in the journal and to further attract outstanding future research. The selection committee, composed of members from six countries, selects a maximum of two outstanding papers annually published in Atmospheric Environment.
The Haagen-Smit Prize selection committee recognized Peckham as co-author of the article, “Fully coupled ‘online’ chemistry within the WRF model.” The winning paper was published in Atmospheric Environment, December 2005, and continues to be relevant and a resource to the field.
In this paper, the researchers describe a state-of-the-art approach of integrating chemical processes into the existing Weather Research and Forecasting model making it fully coupled and “online.” Unlike air quality models at that time, the “WRF-Chem” model fused the chemistry and meteorological components so that the physical processes governing the two were consistent with each other, that is, both components used the same numerical grid as well as the same transport and physics schemes. Evaluation studies using the “WRF-Chem” demonstrated that this novel approach resulted in statistically better skill in forecasting poor air quality events compared to other commonly used forecast models.
The Haagen-Smit Prize is named in honor of Professor Arie Jan Haagen-Smit, a pioneer in the field of air pollution and one of the first editors of the International Journal of Air Pollution, which proceeded Atmospheric Environment.