Meteorological conditions at the Graciosa ENA station (Azores)
Researchers from the University of Łódź in Poland create a monthly report on the weather conditions at the Graciosa ENA station (Azores) based on data obtained from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) (Office of Science user facility managed by the Biological and Environmental Research Program). The reports provide an overview of general weather conditions, including temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, heat and radiation fluxes, and surface carbon dioxide flux.
The citable reports are available on Zenodo within the "NUCLIM" community: https://zenodo.org/communities/nuclim
Ambient gamma dose rate modelling
In parallel to the setup and measurement in the field campaigns, our project partners at IFIN-HH (Romania) are developing models to describe the gamma dose background. The models are based on gamma radiation and radon concentration measurements from the ENA station as well as measurements at PTB's ERADOS reference site. They describe the expected background gamma radiation for specific conditions.
The figure shows the observed gamma radiation, the background gamma radiation estimated by the model and the amount of precipitation. The short-term fluctuations are closely related to precipitation events because of the wash-out of radon progeny from the atmosphere. Radon together with its short-lived progeny is the primary contributor to short-term fluctuations in the environmental gamma radiation. Now, the models are further refined and new data is added. With them, we will better understand natural variations and thereby improve environmental radiation models but also distinguish natural fluctuations from anthropogenic events.
For more details, see this preliminary report by IFIN-HH: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19705246.
