Courses
Enhance your learning by taking a course at ACE!
All courses will be conducted on Monday, June 24. Continuing Education credit opportunities are available. Register for courses on the ACE 2024 Registration page.
Course Descriptions
AIR-272: Quality Assurance of Air Quality and Meteorological Data
Monday, June 24, 2024 • 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm, Ideation 2
Instructor: Dennis Fudge, Retired Air Quality Specialist
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
The course is designed to show techniques for quality assuring air quality and meteorological data. The course will identify common errors seen in data and the causes for these errors. The course will show how to determine if suspicious data is valid. This is an information sharing course where you not only learn how to quality assure data, but there is an opportunity for others attending to discuss the techniques they found more useful compared to other techniques, and the issues they have noticed with the monitors they used. It is an excellent opportunity to network with others in the monitoring and reviewing of data.
Participants will learn how to:
- Review air quality data and meteorological data
- Identify outliers and erroneous values and determine whether the data is invalid and should be removed
- Adjust data due to drifts so that it is more representative of the ambient air which will improve on the accuracy for trend analysis
- Identify common errors made when measuring air quality and meteorology
- How to use data to determine if a monitoring site is set up correctly
AIR-299: AERMOD Air Dispersion Modeling
Monday, June 24, 2024 • 8:00 am - 5:00 pm, Ideation 3
Instructor: Michael Hammer, CCM, Senior Meteorologist, Lakes Environmental Software
Level: Beginner
The course provides attendees with a full understanding of the AERMOD modeling system by balancing theory with hands-on-real world case studies. At the end of this course, participants should be able to understand the basics of regulatory air dispersion modeling for permit applications and risk assessments.
No prerequisites are required. Attendees will be required to bring their own laptop.
Course Instructors
Dennis Fudge, Retired Air Quality Specialist
Dennis Fudge is an Air Quality Specialist who just recently retired after spending seven years with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment as a Senior Air Quality Scientist. Prior to that he worked for the B.C. Ministry of Environment as an Air Quality Meteorologist for 21 years. During those terms, he spent many hours reviewing data, trying to determine the validity of the data and on several occasions got in trouble for criticizing the lack of quality assurance of data. For the past 30 years he has also been involved in air quality forecasting, air dispersion modelling, air shed management, preparing air quality reports and trend analysis. He has a B.Sc. in Physics from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a Diploma in Meteorology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, as well as Atmospheric Chemistry courses from York University in Toronto and University of Northern B.C. in Prince George.
Michael Hammer, CCM, Senior Meteorologist, Lakes Environmental Software
Mr. Michael Hammer, CCM serves as Senior Meteorologist for Lakes Environmental Software’s global operations. He has over 18 years of experience in the field of air quality modeling and manages all aspects of software technical support for Lakes Environmental’s wide range of commercial air quality modeling software products. He plays a key role in advancing commercial software products and meteorological data solutions using automation and design of innovative functionality. Mr. Hammer provides consulting expertise on many meteorological topics including data validation, review of modeling studies, and meteorological data processing using advanced models such as MM5 and WRF. He is experienced in preparing meteorological and geophysical data for use with numerous air quality models including AERMOD, ADMS, CALPUFF, and SCIPUFF/SCICHEM.
