Journal of Spatial Analysis

In issues related to air pollution, the thickness of the boundary layer is known as the depth of the mixed layer because the pollution on the ground surface is mixed in this entire layer through turbulence processes. In most cases, the boundary of the area is clearly visible on big industrial cities. The depth of the mixed layer has an important effect in the concentration of air pollution which is dependent on the intensity and duration of solar radiation and wind speed. Usually after 2 to 3 hours from the time of maximum solar radiation, air temperature near the earth's surface reaches its maximum value. At this time convection of heat is formed in the air near the earth surface and transfers the heat from the surface to higher altitudes. These vertical movements will cause atmospheric turbulence and increase in instability. This is when the growth of the mixed layer reaches to its highest level. After sunset, night temperature inversion occurs near the surface. This temperature inversion is due to the rapid cooling of the Earth's surface. In such condition, the cold air layer is near the earth's surface and the warm air layer sits on top of it and air is in a stable condition.  As a result, the accumulation of contamination, if there are sources of pollutants, will increase in the earth's near-surface layer. If the conditions remain steady during the day, the mixed layer will not have much growth and as a result, contamination in the shallow layer near the surface of the Earth reduces solar radiation.

Each year, thousands of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter are emitted in the metropolitan area of Tehran and due to the geographical and climatic conditions of Tehran, temperature inversion phenomenon is not something unexpected. By formation of the inversion layer, these pollutants will remain near the earth's surface for a long time which in turn will be the cause of a lot of heart and respiratory problems. Therefore, identifying the characteristics of this layer on polluted days is of particular importance to the health of the residents of this city.

In this research, the study area is Tehran which is in the foothills of the southern Alborz and between longitudes 51 ° 2 'to 51 degrees 36' east and latitude 35 degrees 34 minutes and 35 degrees 50 minutes northern. The height of the northernmost point of this city is 1800 and up to 1200 meters in the center and 1050 meters in the south.

To conduct this research, inversion data including temperature, wind, atmospheric pressure and humidity and vertical navigation radiosonde data at the Mehrabad weather station from January to 29 December 2013, were taken from the Meteorological Organization of country. Then the statistics of daily vertical scroll of atmosphere above the Mehrabad synoptic station was received from the University of Wyoming. Also, the hourly data of air pollutants including gaseous pollutants CO, N2O, O3, SO2 and particulate matter (PM10) were prepared from the air quality control center (AQCC) for the stations Aghdasiyeh, Geophysics, Poonak, Rey and District 11.

After receiving information about the vertical scroll of the atmosphere in Mehrabad station, in order to have a closer examination of the vertical profiles of potential temperature changes in the lower atmosphere, using daily data from the radiosonde to obtain potential temperature changes in height were measured. Then, in order to identify the days with high pollution levels (the unhealthy condition for sensitive groups) and days with good conditions, so that all stations under study were the same, based on a standard index of air pollution Table 1 was developed. In the end, 4 days with critical inversion of potential temperature, including two polluted days (February 6th and August 16th) and two clean days (9 February and 5 June) were detected. Then according to the proposed method of Hefter, the approximate height of the boundary layer was calculated for these 4 days.

In this study, it was observed that the boundary layer height in contaminated cold season of the year reached 1,200 meters in the morning hours while in the afternoon in the cold samples, it grew to 1900 meters. In the warmer months based on the height of critical inversion layer in the selected days it reached more than 6,000 meters. In pure samples of warm and cold seasons, the boundary layer height had significant growth to the extent that in the cold sample of the year it reached to 2,100 meters in the morning and 2,600 meters in the afternoon. On June 5, which is intended to represent the clean and pure heating season, boundary layer height was of 5300 meters in the morning hours which shows a 4,000-meters increase in comparison to its polluted counterpart. The point to be noted is that since the active track of potential temperature can be considered as a measure of air stability, in the critical inversion, for the case of polluted samples of morning hours that were irradiated with inversion, active track of the potential temperature was very high in them. Thus on days with radiated inversion (polluted days) we can say that border of boundary layer was based on the inverted layer. Also the methods used in these types of inversions are more efficient for the determining height of the boundary layer.

One of the most important components of the extent of pollutants mixing and air quality at near the Earth's surface is the height of boundary layer. Many variables involved in determining the height of the boundary layer of atmosphere. Although all of the troposphere (the lower ~10km of the atmosphere) is affected by surface conditions, most of it has a relatively slow response time. The lower part of the troposphere that is affected on a shorter time scale is commonly defined as the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). The depth of the mixed layer has a significant effect on the concentration of air pollution, which itself is dependent on the intensity and duration of solar radiation and wind speed. According to Stull, one can describe the planetary boundary layer as “that part of the troposphere that is directly influenced by the presence of the earth’s surface, and responds to surface forcing with a timescale of about an hour or less.”  Surface temperature has a strong relationship with height of the PBL. As the surface cycles between daytime radiation and nighttime cooling the amount of convection taking place changes. When the temperature gradient is steep, more convection takes place to dissipate thermal energy in the most efficient manner. In other words, the greater the temperature difference between the surface and the lower troposphere, the higher convective eddies must reach to alleviate the gradient. Relating this to Stull’s definition of turbulence, it can be concluded that the height of the PBL varies with surface temperature. In fact, the spatial range of the PBL can vary from less than one hundred meters to several kilometers. The strong relationship between convective turbulence and height of the PBL is sometimes used to define the boundary layer and call it the Convective Boundary Layer (CBL). Analogous to the Stull’s definition but focusing on turbulence, Lloyd et all describe CBL as “a layer of air typically of order 1km in depth, well mixed by turbulence maintained by buoyancy due to heating at the ground. It is bounded above by stably stratified, no turbulent air and grows through the day.  In this study we aimed to analysis the status of ABL in 3 dust period days in Khuzestan province of Iran.

The Data were used in this study includes: The Daily data of dust concentration during 27Jan to 1 Feb 2015, the daily height of ABL also were used. The daily data of ABL were given from ECMWF with 1/8 degree spatial resolution. We used the Pearson correlation and synoptic analysis to assessment the condition of boundary layer at the mentioned days. For analysis the characteristic of ABL the climatic data of Wyoming University were used to assessment the thermodynamics of atmosphere. The spatial distribution of ABL height at the dusty day also were used for 12 UTC.

The results indicated there is the direct relationship between the ABL height and the concentration of dust in the mentioned days. So that in the days that the concentration of dust reaches maximum we fund that the height of ABL reaches maximum simultaneously and vis versa. The spatial distribution of ABL height shown that the height of ABL in the 29Jan reaches maximum that the maximum concentration of dust related to this day. And also the minimum concentration of dust observed in 27Jan and 1Feb that the in this day the height of ABL was minimum. The synoptic analysis also reveals that locating the low pressure system at the 500hp level that the Khuzestan province has been locating at the front of this system lead to transport the dust to study area.

In this study we reveal that the height of ABL in the dust days of Khuzestan has a totally revers behavior in compare to the air pollution days in Tehran. In the pollution days in Tehran the lowing of ABL height and inversion lead to intensify the concentration of pollution while in the dust days of Khuzestan the height of ABL were increased in compared with non-dusty days.