Summer episode temperature inversion and its impact on CO concentration in urban environment

Abstract

The Indian cities are experiencing tremendous growth in vehicular population due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. The major outcome of this vehicle population explosion has resulted in increase in pollution level in urban centers as well as traffic congestion on roads, increase in travel time, increase in fatal accidents. The prevailing meteorological conditions play an important role in the dispersion of the pollutants. The meteorological elements that have most direct and significant effect on the distribution of air pollutants in the atmosphere are wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity, atmospheric stability and precipitation. A study of meteorological parameters in the Surat city during the summer seasons has been made and analyzed. The monitoring of temperature at ground level and at specific height has been done simultaneously at residential locations in a Surat city. Normally, the temperature inversion phenomenon is observed in winter season and during the early morning hours only. Monitoring has shown that in summer season, the temperature inversion was observed in the early morning hours as well as in the afternoon hours. Temperature inversion is one of the most crucial atmospheric condition which is responsible for high pollution level in particular area therefore it is required to analyze the influence of temperature inversion condition on the dispersion of air pollutions, the monitoring of CO concentration with traffic volume was carried out at specific location in summer season.