UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS

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2024-11-22 1:22
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2013 Meeting


Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection


Title:
The impact of air mass origin on air quality over Bucharest, Romania, using back-trajectories analysis


Authors:
Aurelia Lupascu (1), Amalia Iriza (1,2), Rodica-Claudia Dumitrache (1)


Affiliation:
1National Meteorological Administration, Bucharest, Romania

2Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania


E-mail
aurelia.lupascu@meteoromania.ro


Keywords:
air mass origin; back-trajectories; air quality; model


Abstract:
In this study we asses the ability of the CHIMERE air quality model to predict the air pollution in the Bucharest city, during March 2013 period. The principal aim is to analyze whether air masses originated over different regions have impact on air pollution characteristics. The transport of air masses to Bucharest was computed by means of the HYSPLIT (HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) model which was used to calculate 72h backward trajectories. We calculated the frequency of the location of the reference back points in 45O sectors: north (N), north-east (NE), east (E), south-east (SE), south (S), south-west (SW), west (W) and north-west (NW). Analyzing the relationship between trajectories and air quality results during the studied period it was observed that for the air masses originating from E, W and SW better modeled results were obtained. This might suggest that although sources in Bucharest most probably dominate the measured concentrations, these circulations also make a substantial contribution. The median concentration for each sector varies between 2-96 µg/m3 (observations) and 0.6-7 µg/m3 (model) for NO2, 19-63 µg/m3 (observations) and 44-72 µg/m3 (model) for O3, 1.9-25 µg/m3 (observations) and 1.7-6.5 µg/m3 (model) for SO2, and 2.2-3.14 µg/m3 (observations) and 0.12-0.18 µg/m3 (model) for CO. Except for O3, the model strongly underestimates the observations.