Weather and National Security

What if terrorists released a deadly substance into the air near a heavily populated area? Atmospheric scientists work with national security officials on emergency response systems capable of tracking the likely course of a toxic plume.

In the spring of 2004, the Pentagon began testing a breakthrough system that uses high-tech instruments and weather forecasting models to scan for potential airborne toxins and predict their motion and impact. NCAR is leading the multiagency effort to develop the system.

Although the system is designed to protect the Pentagon, it may be adapted for other sites around the country. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has funded a study to design a comprehensive bio-attack defense and warning strategy for the nation's cities.

Atmospheric science also plays a role in protecting the public at high-profile events, such as the Olympics. At the Salt Lake City winter Olympics in 2002, for example, NCAR provided military officials with high-precision weather forecasts generated every three hours. Had there been a toxic release, those forecasts of wind direction and temperature would have helped officials predict the path of the plume and direct evacuation accordingly. NCAR is again deploying fine-scale weather modeling to support antiterrorism activities at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Similar systems have been used to keep troops safe in war zones, such as Afghanistan and Iraq , where there is danger that chemical or biological agents could be released into the air. A new NCAR project is refining the system into a tool capable of analyzing the consequences of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incident anywhere on the globe.

After the 1991 Gulf War, NCAR scientists took part in a project to determine whether troops were exposed to sarin gas released from a chemical depot in Al Muthanna, one of the major manufacturing centers of Iraq 's chemical warfare program. The project encompassed computer modeling of possible exposures to the sarin gas at various distances from the facility and used different weather and physics schemes to predict dispersal. Based on this and other modeling work, the Office of the Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses concluded that U.S. service members were not exposed to chemical warfare agents resulting from Coalition air attacks at the Al Muthanna chemical weapons facility.

These projects have benefited from technologies developed for a long-standing, multiagency effort called 4DWX (Four-Dimensional Weather) , sponsored by the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command.

While protecting the nation from deliberate acts is the goal of this work, an added benefit is improved ability to protect citizens from a toxic release caused by a natural disaster or an industrial or transportation accident. Lessons learned on these projects will also increase understanding of fine-scale urban weather and how to predict it.

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