Abstract
Severe biomass burning (BB) events have become increasingly common in South America in the last few years, mainly due to the high number of wildfires observed recently. Such incidents can negatively influence the air quality index associated with PM2.5 (particulate matter, which is harmful to human health). A study performed in the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP) took place on selected days of July 2019, evaluated the influence of a BB event on air quality. Use of combined remote sensing, a surface monitoring system and data modeling and enabled detection of the BB plume arrival (light detection and ranging (lidar) ratio of (50 ± 34) sr at 532 nm, and (72 ± 45) sr at 355 nm) and how it affected the Ångström exponent (>1.3), atmospheric optical depth (>0.7), PM2.5 concentrations (>25 µg.m−3), and air quality classification. The utilization of high-order statistical moments, obtained from elastic lidar, provided a new way to observe the entrainment process, allowing understanding of how a decoupled aerosol layer influences the local urban area. This new novel approach enables a lidar system to obtain the same results as a more complex set of instruments and verify how BB events contribute from air masses aloft towards near ground ones.
Highlights
Air quality is one of the biggest problems faced by humanity currently, being more aggravated in large urban centers [1]
The RCS skewness and kurtosis profiles allow a better understanding of the interaction process between free troposphere (FT) and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) so that after continuous exchanges between these two layers, it is expected that surface sensors can detect the biomass burning (BB) event effect
This paper analyzes the influence of a BB event on the air quality of the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP)
Summary
Air quality is one of the biggest problems faced by humanity currently, being more aggravated in large urban centers [1]. Among the various pollutants emitted daily in cities, particulate matter (PM) is noteworthy due to its relevant influence on the radiative balance [1,2,3,4,5], directly or indirectly, depending on its optical properties The exposition to this class of pollutants is hazardous to human well-being [6], principally due to the exposition to PM2.5 (particles with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 μm). Vehicular traffic is an important source of PM2.5 in urban centers (contributing to consistent long-term degradation of urban air quality), external sources like biomass burning (BB) plumes can contribute to the increase of the PM2.5 concentration, producing more serious adverse effects on urban air quality than vehicular traffic during short-term episodes of transported pollution from wildfires. Several studies have discussed the influence of BB episodes in the aerosol optical properties [9,10,11,12,13,14]
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