Meteorological Effects on Morning Rush Hour Air Pollution

Meteorological Effects on Morning Rush Hour Air

PollutionChris Forehand

Atlanta Commuter Exposure (ACE) Project

BackgroundWhat is the ACE project?

Funded by the CDC Joint project between Emory University and GatechUses continuous and time integrated

measurementWhy is it important?

High exposure concentrations on a daily basis

Methodology

For this class…Examine the effects of:

Seasonal TrendsTemperatureRelative HumidityWind SpeedPrecipitation

Limitations:Mobile measurementsLimited meteorological dataNon-continuous observations

Seasonal TrendsEC (ug/m3) BC (ug/m3) OC (ug/m3)

Fall 2.209972693 5.351207711 20.97853547Winter 1.370976827 5.327759696 13.91420033Spring 2.260973924 7.706329281 14.18891958Summer 5.018534266 9.479550192 21.95192238

10/14/09 1/22/10 5/2/10 8/10/10 11/18/10 2/26/11 6/6/11 9/14/11 -

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

14.00

16.00

18.00

Date

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[]

(ug/

m3)

Event AnalysisMoving Average

Temperature

30 40 50 60 70 80 900

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

R² = 0.0227212196358578

Temperature (F)

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[]

(ug/

m3)

Relative Humidity

60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 1000

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

R² = 0.0421006480027978

Relative Humidity (%)

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[]

(ug/

m3)

Precipitation Events

Wind Speed

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1302468

10121416

R² = 0.150167151765542

Wind Speed (mph)

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[]

(ug/

m3)

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 130

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

R² = 0.190981189697818

Wind Speed (mph)

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[]

(ug/

m3)

Wind Speed (cont.)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

R² = 0.496978024423337

Wind Speed (mph)

Blac

k Ca

rbon

[] (u

g/m

3)

Conclusions Seasonal Variation

Too much scatter and too few points to be very conclusive Pollution seems to dominate in summer, contrary to ABL expectations

Temperature Seems to be very loosely correlated

Relative Humidity Little correlation for fresh source particulates

Wind Speed Limited Data Mild Correlation

Precipitation Observable trends

AcknowledgementsJeremy Sarnat & Roby Greenwald

Emory University, Rollins School of Public HealthMike Bergin

Georgia Institute of TechnologyMartin Shafer

University of WisconsinPriya Kewada, James Gooch, Kyle Manning, and

everyone else on the ACE / SCAPE team!