A meteorology-based approach to detecting the relationship between changes in SO2 emission rates and precipitation concentrations of sulfate
- Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
In this paper, the authors present an analysis of correlations between SO2 emissions and wet SO4(2-) concentrations over eastern North America that includes adjustments for the impact of meteorological variability. The approach uses multiple-regression models and readily available meteorological information to analyze precipitation chemistry data collected from 1979 to 1986 at six Utility Acid Precipitation Study Program sites. On an event-to-event basis, from 25% to 50% of the variation in concentrations, depending on site, was found to be related to meteorology. Precipitation amount, temperature, upwind emissions, and upwind mean lower-tropospheric relative humidity (indicator for upwind precipitation) were related to the natural log of SO4(2-) concentrations. Inclusion of this information resulted in a decrease in the uncertainty associated with the emission change to concentration relationship at all sites, but the results were inconsistent. Year-to-year and season-to-season changes in SO2 emissions were found to be significantly related (p less than 0.033) to variations in event and seasonal concentrations at three of the sites, but not at the other three sites. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are discussed in this paper. When all sites were examined simultaneously, strong statistical correlations (p less than 0.007) were found between emissions and concentrations, indicating that SO4(2-) concentrations decreased in response to seasonal and annual emission changes.
- OSTI ID:
- 45746
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 33, Issue 9; Other Information: PBD: Sep 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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