Characteristics of urban ozone behavior in Seoul, Korea
- Kon-Kuk Univ., Seoul (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Environmental Engineering
The city of Seoul has experienced an unprecedented rate of growth for the past three decades. The exponential increase in the number of automobiles during the nineties has especially done much to aggravate the already serious air pollution situation in this metropolis. This has resulted in the severe overall deterioration of Seoul`s air quality, including several ozone alerts during the two previous summers. Therefore, the temporal variation and spatial distribution characteristics of the ozone concentration data from twenty air pollutant monitoring sites within the city of Seoul were analyzed to consider the effect of increasing emissions and meteorology, especially wind direction, on the behavior of the daily maximum and generally high ozone values in Seoul. Also, the relative impact on the number of ozone alerts from the ozone warning system which was started in 1995 of a 1-hour standard versus an 8-hour basis was studied. The spatial distribution of ozone measurements exceeding 120 ppb during 1991--96 showed that high ozone values occurred throughout the city and the fluctuations of the exceedances were so severe that it was very difficult to detect any spatial or temporal pattern from the data. However, for the special cases when the ozone warning standard of 120 ppb was passed for over 3 consecutive hours, more than 75% of the cases occurred in the southern two sectors. In addition, an analysis of values exceeding 80 ppb showed that despite the two northern sectors having the higher percentages, the temporal trend showed a steady and consistent increase in proportion for the southern region from 33% in 1991 to 54% in 1994. Seasonally, July had the highest proportion with almost 30% followed by the months of June, August, September and May, totaling 96.5%. No general consistent trend was spotted to explain the relationship between wind direction and maximum ozone for all the sites.
- OSTI ID:
- 351174
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970677--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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