Effects of meteorology and land use on ambient measurements of primary pollutants in Córdoba city, Argentina

Summary The atmospheric concentrations of several primary species: NO, NO₂, NO_x, CO, SO₂, reactive hydrocarbons (ROG) and other 15 atmospheric and meteorological variables have been measured at several locations in Córdoba city, Argentina since June 1995. The measurements are carried out using two mobile stations to cover several important areas of Córdoba. The objective of this work is to estimate the effects of meteorology and urban structure on the air quality levels for this city using simple statistics. We analyze the correlation between primary pollutants (CO and NO_x) and site locations of the air quality monitoring stations (AQMS) during the whole 1995 field campaign. In this study we take the measured data for primary pollutants and group them by location and time of the year. The results of this work may be useful to forecast air pollution episodes. Also we can get indirect information about emissions and maybe identify source characteristics. Once the influences of topography, meteorology, and land use will be fully characterized, the existing monitoring data will be used to do air quality modeling analysis and to select monitoring locations. The use of mobile stations instead of stationary ones at this stage is justified because of limited funding. Therefore, it is a valid option to decide in the future the additional instrumentation required to characterize completely the atmospheric urban area.With 5 Figures