PartMC  2.6.1
Input File Format: Aerosol Distribution Profile

Read an array of aero_dists with associated times and rates from the given file.

Parameters
 [in,out] file Spec file to read data from. [in,out] aero_data Aero data. times Times (s). rates Rates (s^{-1}). aero_dists Aero dists.

An aerosol distribution profile input file must consist of three lines:

• the first line must begin with time and should be followed by space-separated real scalars, giving the times (in s after the start of the simulation) of the aerosol distrbution set points — the times must be in increasing order
• the second line must begin with rate and should be followed by space-separated real scalars, giving the values at the corresponding times
• the third line must begin with dist and should be followed by space-separated filenames, each specifying an aerosol distribution in the format Input File Format: Aerosol Distribution at the corresponding time

The units of the rate line depend on the type of aerosol distribution profile:

• Emissions aerosol profiles have rates with units m/s — the aerosol distribution number concentrations are multiplied by the rate to give an emission rate with unit #/(m^2 s) which is then divided by the current mixing layer height to give a per-volume emission rate.
• Background aerosol profiles have rates with units , which is the dilution rate between the background and the simulated air parcel. That is, if the simulated number concentration is and the background number concentration is , then dilution is modeled as , where is the rate.

Between the specified times the aerosol profile is interpolated step-wise and kept constant at its last value. That is, if the times are , the rates are , and the aerosol distributions are (all with ), then between times and the aerosol state is constant at . Before time the aerosol state is , while after time it is .

Example: an emissions aerosol profile could be:

 time  0          600        1800       # time (in s) after sim start
rate  1          0.5        1          # scaling factor in m/s
dist  dist1.dat  dist2.dat  dist3.dat  # aerosol distribution files


Here the emissions between 0 min and 10 min are given by dist1.dat (with the number concentration interpreted as having units 1/(m^2 s)), the emissions between 10 min and 30 min are given by dist2.dat (scaled by 0.5), while the emissions after 30 min are given by dist3.dat.