Correlations between the air pollution and the rainfall composition in Jiului Valley area

Abstract

Rainfall composition is conditional on the air quality. If the air is polluted, the rainfall will be also polluted. In fact, rainfall contains the same compounds like the air as nitrites, nitrates, sulphites, sulphates, ammonia etc. Some cations like calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium are present in rainfall because of dust. This paper presents the air qualities and the soil composition influenced by the rainfall in one of the most polluted mining areas from our country, Jiului Valley.

Sizes of atmospheric particulate matters determine the outcomes of their interactions with rainfall processes

“…If the collision and coalescence of droplets are prevented (e.g., due to temperature inversion), then there wouldn’t be rain (rain prevention) or instead of being prevented, if they rather occur rarely or infrequently, there might be rain but in small quantity (rain reduction), thus leading to the negative relationships we found between PM 10 concentrations and rainfall amount/occurrence 11 , 21 , 22 . Such negative relationships have been reported in some early studies which invoked a suppression effect of air pollutants on rainfall 11 , 12 , 14 , 15 in various parts of the world, including Romania 16 , Israel 17 , the US 18 and Australia 11 , 19 , 20 . More recently, Barthlott et al 35 investigated the importance of aerosols and cloud droplet size distribution for convective clouds and precipitation in Germany.…”

“…According to Rosenfeld 11 , anthropogenic air pollution may be aggravating water scarcity issues by suppressing rainfall processes 12 , 14 , 15 . For example, an early study reported a reduction in rainfall in Jiului Valley (Romania) following a period of poor air quality driven by particulate matters generated by thermoelectric power plants and coal mining fields 16 . Records of rainfall suppression in the Haifa Bay region, Israel, was attributed to air pollution, since rainfall delays are notably pronounced during the periods of massive urbanization and heavy industrial activities 17 .…”