Computation, accuracy and applications of trajectories—A review and bibliography

To the authors knowledge, there exists no recent review paper on the computation and use of trajectories. To fill this gap, this study summarizes the current knowledge on the calculation and application of trajectories. The different techniques that can be used to compute trajectories are presented and their error sources are described. The assumptions often made to account for the vertical wind velocity are explained. Most studies agree now that fully three-dimensional trajectories are the most accurate trajectory type. Methods to assess trajectory errors are outlined and a summary of the errors presented in the literature is given. Errors of 20% of the distance travelled seem to be typical for trajectories computed from analyzed wind fields. Finally, some important applications of trajectories, namely Lagrangian particle dispersion models, Lagrangian chemical box models and trajectory statistics, are discussed.