Abstract
Results from an intensive field campaign of meteorological and air quality measurements performed within the project ALPNAP are addressed and discussed. Three target areas were investigated between January and March 2006 in order to collect a detailed picture of the specific atmospheric processes affecting the fate of pollutants in one of the main Alpine transit corridors, leading to the Brenner Pass. This paper highlights the peculiarities of a typical “valley environment”, namely that referred to the Adige Valley (Northern Italy) in its lower 120-km part from Salorno/Salurn towards Verona. Thanks to a carefully designed instrumental setup, the intensive field measurements successively performed at each target area clearly displayed the interaction of meteorological phenomena at both regional and local scale. The former may be identified as the responsible for the day by day variation of pollutant concentrations and especially for the strong decreases due to Foehn episodes or perturbations. The latter are locally affected by topographic factors and in turn determine the spatial distribution of air pollutants across the valley section. Some remarkable examples of typical features during specific high-concentration episodes typical of the winter season are presented and discussed. In particular the diurnal cycles of pollutant concentrations are compared to the local circulations and to the thermal stratification in the lower layers, displaying a clear correlation which explains both the daily variability as well as the progressive increase in the background values.
Published Version
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