Meteorological Reanalyses for the Study of Gulf War Illnesses: Khamisiyah Case Study

The Marine Meteorology Division of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), assisted by the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, has performed global and mesoscale reanalyses to support the study of Gulf War illness. Realistic and quantitatively accurate atmospheric conditions are needed to drive dispersion models that can predict the transport and dispersion of chemical agents that may have affected U.S. and other coalition troops in the hours and days following the demolition of chemical weapons at Khamisiyah, Iraq, at approximately 1315 UTC 10 March 1991. The reanalysis was conducted with the navy’s global and mesoscale analysis and prediction systems: the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System and the NRL Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System. A comprehensive set of observations has been collected and used in the reanalysis, including unclassified and declassified surface reports, ship and buoy reports, observations from pibal and rawinsonde, and retr...