This section provides some guidance in configuring the model to perform
certain specialized calculations. These include deciding between
particle or puff releases, dealing with
continuous emissions, creating an file with
time variations of the emission rate, unit-source
simulations with time-varying emissions,
area source emissions,
multiple pollutants, pollutant
transformations, atmospheric
chemistry,
deposition and decay,
compilation limits, scripting for
The Configuration Setup menu permits the creation and modification of the SETUP.CFG namelist file for either Trajectory or Air Concentration calculations. The namelist file is a variable length file that is used to set additional parameters that can be used to modify the nature of the simulation. The namelist file is not required because all the namelist variables take on default values when the SETUP.CFG file is not found. The same namelist file can be used for either trajectory or air concentration simulations but only certain variables are applicable to each simulation. Supplemental plot labeling options are available, a menu to configure a dynamic sampler that can move in space and time for use with the concentration simulation, and a menu to configure the default directory structure and location of executable programs used by the GUI. More complex point source emissions scenarios can be defined by creating the EMITIMES emissions file.
The View MESSAGES menu is used to display the diagnostic message file. For all trajectory or concentration simulations, diagnostic information is written to standard output until the initialization process has completed. At that point the MESSAGE file is opened and subsequent diagnostic and certain error messages are written to this file. If the model does not complete properly, some additional diagnostic information may be obtained from this file.