Abstract
The Planetary Boundary Layer Height (PBLH) plays an important role in the formation and development of air pollution events. Particulate Matter is one of major pollutants in China. Here, we present the characteristics of PBLH through three-methods of Lidar data inversion and show the correlation between the PBLH and the PM2.5 (PM2.5 with the diameter <2.5 μm) in the period of December 2015 through November 2016, over Nanjing, in southeast China. We applied gradient method (GRA), standard deviation method (STD) and wavelet covariance transform method (WCT) to calculate the PBLH. The results show that WCT is the most stable method which is less sensitive to the signal noise. We find that the PBLH shows typical seasonal variation trend with maximum in summer and minimum in winter, respectively. The yearly averaged PBLH in the diurnal cycle show the minimum of 570 m at 08:00 and the maximum of 1089 m at 15:00 Beijing time. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship of the PBLH and PM2.5 concentration under different particulate pollution conditions. The correlation coefficient is about −0.70, which is negative correlation. The average PBLH are 718 m and 1210 m when the PM2.5 > 75 μg/m3 and the PM2.5 < 35 μg/m3 in daytime, respectively. The low PBLH often occurs with condition of the low wind speed and high relative humidity, which will lead to high PM2.5 concentration and the low visibility. On the other hand, the stability of PBL is enhanced by high PM concentration and low visibility.
Highlights
In recent years, with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, air pollution is becoming more and more serious in China [1,2]
The other two methods locate the Planetary Boundary Layer Height (PBLH) at the upper layer of cloud with the value of 1049 m and 1076 m for standard deviation method (STD) and wavelet covariance transform method (WCT) method, respectively
PBLHs derived from the gradient method (GRA) and STD
Summary
With the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, air pollution is becoming more and more serious in China [1,2]. Different numerical models and measurements have been applied to investigate the radiative forcing of nitrate [9], sulfate [10,11], and carbonaceous aerosols [12,13], as well as their mixtures [14,15,16,17] over East Asia. These studies demonstrated that aerosol particles can reduce the solar radiation reaching ground and augment the planetary albedo.
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