Ground-based measurements and vertical distributions of radon and its daughters are used to benchmark regional and global circulation models. Regional surface fluxes of air pollutants and climatically sensitive compounds are often estimated by using the same data.

Despite many experimental studies in the literature, very few of them reported measurements of diurnal variation of radon and its daughters through the whole atmospheric boundary layer. Using a state-of-the-art large-eddy simulation, we study the diurnal evolution and the dispersion of radon and its progeny.

References:

• J.-F. Vinuesa, and S. Galmarini, 2007: Characterization of the ²²²Rn family turbulent transport in the convective boundary layer, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 7, 697-712.
• J.-F. Vinuesa, S. Basu, and S. Galmarini, 2007: Diurnal evolution of 222Rn and its progeny in the atmospheric boundary layer, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 7, 5003-5019.