Outline of air pollution dispersion

Air pollution dispersion – distribution of air pollution into the atmosphere. Air pollution is the introduction of particulates, biological molecules, or other harmful materials into Earth's atmosphere, causing disease, death to humans, damage to other living organisms such as food crops, or the natural or built environment. Air pollution may come from anthropogenic or natural sources. Dispersion refers to what happens to the pollution during and after its introduction; understanding this may help in identifying and controlling it. Air pollution dispersion has become the focus of environmental conservationists and governmental environmental protection agencies (local, state, province and national) of many countries (which have adopted and used much of the terminology of this field in their laws and regulations) regarding air pollution control.
Air pollution emission plumes.
Air pollution emission plume – flow of pollutant in the form of vapor or smoke released into the air. Plumes are of considerable importance in the atmospheric dispersion modelling of air pollution. There are three primary types of air pollution emission plumes:
Air pollution dispersion models.
There are five types of air pollution dispersion models, as well as some hybrids of the five types:
Characterization of atmospheric turbulence.
Effect of turbulence on dispersion – turbulence increases the entrainment and mixing of unpolluted air into the plume and thereby acts to reduce the concentration of pollutants in the plume (i.e., enhances the plume dispersion). It is therefore important to categorize the amount of atmospheric turbulence present at any given time. This type of dispersion is scale dependent. Such that, for flows where the cloud of pollutant is smaller than the largest eddies present, there will be mixing. There is no limit on the size on mixing motions in the atmosphere and therefore bigger clouds will experience larger and stronger mixing motions. And hence, this type of dispersion is scale dependent.
The Pasquill atmospheric stability classes.
Pasquill atmospheric stability classes – oldest and, for a great many years, the most commonly used method of categorizing the amount of atmospheric turbulence present was the method developed by Pasquill in 1961. 
He categorized the atmospheric turbulence into six stability classes named A, B, C, D, E and F with class A being the most unstable or most turbulent class, and class F the most stable or least turbulent class. 
Table 1: The Pasquill stability classes
Table 2: Meteorological conditions that define the Pasquill stability classes
Incoming solar radiation is based on the following: strong (> 700 W m−2), moderate (350-700 W m−2), slight (< 350 W m−2)
Other parameters that can define the stability class.
The stability class can be defined also by using the
Advanced methods of categorizing atmospheric turbulence.
Advanced air pollution dispersion models – they do not categorize atmospheric turbulence by using the simple meteorological parameters commonly used in defining the six Pasquill classes as shown in Table 2 above. The more advanced models use some form of Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. Some examples include: