Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6335718 Atmospheric Environment 2016 12 Pages PDF
Abstract
Yunlin County is located in the central part of western Taiwan with major emissions from the Mailiao industrial park, the Taichung Power Plants and heavy traffic. In order to understand the influence of meteorological conditions on PM2.5 concentrations in Yunlin County, we applied a two-stage cluster analysis method using the daily averaged surface winds from four air quality monitoring stations in Yunlin County to classify the weather pattern. The study period includes 1095 days from Jan 2013 to December 2015. The classification results show that the low PM2.5 concentration occurs when the synoptic weather in Taiwan is affected by the strong southwesterly monsoonal flow. The high PM2.5 concentration occurs when Taiwan is under the influence of weak synoptic weather conditions and continental high-pressure peripheral circulation. A high PM2.5 event was studied and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) meteorological model was performed. The result indicated that due to being blocked by the Central Mountain Range, Yunlin County, which is situated on the leeside of the mountains, exhibits low wind speed and strong subsidence behavior that favors PM2.5 accumulation.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Earth and Planetary Sciences Atmospheric Science
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