Diurnal Pattern of PM10 and CO in Riau as a Forest Fire Risk Area

Abstract

PM10 and CO are air pollutants emitted by fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning have the bad impact on human being. Riau as a forest fire risk area, it is supposed that air quality related to PM10 and CO affected by the fire. This paper studies diurnal pattern of PM10 and CO in Riau during 2015 when a strong El Nino phenomena occurs. The diurnal pattern of pollutant is useful for hazard mitigation of the pollutant especially when its concentration reaches maximum and potent to exceed the threshold value of ambient air quality. The result of the study shows plot scatter of PM10 and CO has got the correlation coefficient of 0.72 when no fire period and 0.91 when fire period. The strong correlation in fire period is caused by the similarity of major sources of biomass burning that ignored other sources. Both diurnal patterns, especially CO shows a bimodal shape when no fire period, and the pattern changes to being flat all of the day when a great forest fire occurs in Riau and its surrounding. The bimodal shape was characterized by two concentration peaks in the morning at 08.00 and in the evening at 20.00 local time that was related on rush hour, atmospheric stability, chemical reaction rate of CO. During one year of el Nino phenomena in 2015, CO concentration is still below national air quality standard although in a great fire period and the diurnal peak concentration, while PM10 concentration in some days in fire period exceeds the national air quality standard.