Use of Remote Sensors in Air Quality Monitoring and Prediction

Abstract

Air quality is a highly interdisciplinary problem dependent on both chemical and meteorological processes. The investigation of atmospheric pollution requires information about the types of emitted chemical compounds, their concentrations, their mutual interaction under different ambient conditions, and finally about their transport and diffusion into the atmosphere. This chapter introduces the effects of meteorology on air quality and the use of meteorological data from remote sensors in air quality monitoring and prediction. The change in air quality over the course of a diurnal cycle is described, explaining the role of atmospheric boundary layer and turbulence motion. Because of the need to measure the strength of the vertical mixing and the depth through which it occurs, as well as the vertical profile of wind speed and direction throughout the lowest several kilometers of the atmosphere, remote sensors, such as lidars and wind profiling radars, are demonstrated to be extremely valuable for assessing and predicting air quality. Few examples of air quality experiments are presented to demonstrate how remote sensors can lead to new insights on the local meteorology control on air pollutant concentrations and the benefit of meteorological data assimilation in air quality prediction.

Presented at International Summer School on Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, L’Aquila, Italy, September 3–7, 2007