HYSPLIT

The Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model (HYSPLIT) is a computer model that is used to compute air parcel trajectories and dispersion or deposition of atmospheric pollutants. It was developed by NOAA and Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.

One popular use of HYSPLIT is to establish whether high levels of air pollution at one location are caused by transport of air contaminants from another location. HYSPLIT's back trajectories, combined with satellite images (for example, from NASA's MODIS satellites), can provide insight into whether high air pollution levels are caused by local air pollution sources or whether an air pollution problem was blown in on the wind.

HYSPLIT is rather unusual in that it may be run in client-server mode (HYSPLIT-WEB) from the NOAA website, allowing members of the public to select gridded historical or forecast datasets, to configure model runs, and retrieve model results with a web browser.