Air pollution trends and countermeasures of Seoul metropolitan area last 20 years
The city of Seoul is a mega-city with the area of 605 km{sup 2} (0.6% of the total area of South Korea) but has about 25% (11 million) of the total population, 32% of the total vehicles, and more than 40% of the total national production. As a result, severe environmental problems have arisen in Seoul including frequent visibility impairment episodes and signs of photochemical smog. The visibility, air quality and gaseous characteristics of Seoul metropolitan were measured during the last several years, and investigated the air pollution trends and causes of last twenty years. The major parameters such as particle size distribution, light extinction budget, meteorological parameters and particle characteristics were measured and simulated. For this study, many different measurements of previous researchers' results were used in order to analyze the causes and counter measures. The yearly average concentrations of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and total suspended particles were decreased due to strong Korean government air quality control and clean fuel supplying policies. But the yearly average concentrations of ozone and nitrogen dioxide have not been decreased due to the drastically increased the number of vehicles and other impacts, such as transport of air pollutants from outside of Seoul. The smog phenomena and visibility impairment causes are to be more investigated in near future.
- Research Organization:
- Korea Inst. of Science and Technology, Seoul (KR)
- OSTI ID:
- 20006515
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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