Spatial and temporal variability of ground-level ozone in Castilla-León (Spain)

Abstract

Ozone is a secondary air pollutant that has received extensive attention in the literature, mainly because of the adverse effects that exposure to it can cause, particularly in vegetation during the growing season. Because meteorological conditions strongly influence the efficiency of photochemical processes leading to ozone formation and destruction, ground-level ozone air pollution is currently being considered as a regional-scale phenomenon rather than a local one. This role of O3 as a regional-scale pollutant often implies the handling of large data sets in order to obtain information about its spatial and temporal variability patterns over a given broad region. Rotated principal component analysis (RPCA) is known to be one of the most powerful mathematical tools that can be used to achieve this aim. RPCA was applied in this paper to the summer and winter hourly time series of ground-level O3, concentrations recorded during 2 consecutive years (1996-1997) at 26 urban and suburban sites in Castilla-León (Spain). This procedure permitted the identification of different subregions where O3 concentrations show different spatio-temporal variability patterns. These variability patterns are mainly associated with the interaction of regional-level meteorological and anthropogenic factors. Some differences between winter and summer patterns were also found.

High Nighttime Ground-Level Ozone Concentrations in Kemaman: NO and NO2 Concentrations Attributions

“…Considerable research employed the variability of O 3 concentrations on daily, seasonal, weekend, and weekday bases. The variability of O 3 concentrations in urban (Alvarez et al, 2000;Ghazali et al, 2010;Hassan et al, 2013), suburban (Reddy et al, 2011;Swamy et al, 2012), and rural (Duenas et al, 2004) conditions were also described by several studies. Toh et al (2013) and Ghozdic et al (2011) explored the role of meteorology in the variation of O 3 concentrations and concluded that O 3 is significantly responsive toward temperature, UV radiation, relative humidity, as well as wind speed and direction.…”

Climate Change, Tropospheric Ozone and Particulate Matter, and Health Impacts

“…Some air pollutants demonstrate clear seasonal cycles (Alvarez et al 2000; Eiguren-Fernandez et al 2004; Hazenkamp-Von Arx 2004; Kassomenos et al 2003; Nagendra and Khare 2003). Certain weather situations provide the requisite meteorologic conditions for pollution episodes.…”

The Seasonal Variation of the Concentrations of Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide, and Nitrogen Oxides in Two Nigerian Cities

“…spatial and temporal variations of ozone and to identify the important factors influencing ozone concentration [12,14,19]. Different subregions have, however, been identified where ozone concentration exhibited characteristic spatial and temporal patterns based on the differences arising from the interaction of their respective meteorological conditions with anthropogenic effects [2]. More specifically, Bloomfield et al [4] established a nonlinear regression model for hourly ozone data in the Chicago area in which meteorological variables, seasonality, and a trend term were all implicated.…”