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Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer
Version 1
: Received: 30 March 2024 / Approved: 1 April 2024 / Online: 2 April 2024 (07:42:50 CEST)
How to cite:
Jiang, N.; Riley, M.; Azzi, M.; Di Virgilio, G.; Duc, H.N.; Puppala, P. Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer. Preprints2024, 2024040169. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0169.v1
Jiang, N.; Riley, M.; Azzi, M.; Di Virgilio, G.; Duc, H.N.; Puppala, P. Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer. Preprints 2024, 2024040169. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0169.v1
Jiang, N.; Riley, M.; Azzi, M.; Di Virgilio, G.; Duc, H.N.; Puppala, P. Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer. Preprints2024, 2024040169. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0169.v1
APA Style
Jiang, N., Riley, M., Azzi, M., Di Virgilio, G., Duc, H.N., & Puppala, P. (2024). Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0169.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Jiang, N., Hiep Nguyen Duc and Praveen Puppala. 2024 "Visualising Daily PM10 Pollution in an Open-Cut Mining Valley of New South Wales, Australia - Part II: Classification of Synoptic Circulation Types and Local Meteorological Patterns and Their Relation to Elevated Air Pollution in Spring and Summer" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0169.v1
Abstract
The Upper Hunter Valley is a major coal mining area in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Due to the ongoing increase of mining activities, PM10 (air-borne particle with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 micrometres) pollution has become a major air quality concern in local communities. The early part of this study identified two air quality subregions in the valley. This paper aims to provide a holistic summarisation of the relationships between elevated PM10 pollution in two subregions and the local- and synoptic-scale meteorological conditions for spring and summer, when PM10 pollution is relatively high. A catalogue of twelve synoptic types and a set of six local meteorological patterns have been quantitatively derived and linked to each other using the self-organising map (SOM) technique. The complex meteorology-air pollution relationships have been visualised/interpretated on the SOM planes for two representative locations. It was found that the influence of local meteorological patterns differed significantly for mean PM10 levels vs the occurrence of elevated pollution events and between air quality subregions. In contrast, synoptic types showed generally similar relationships with mean vs elevated PM10 pollution in the valley. Two local meteorological patterns, the hot-dry-northwesterly wind conditions and the hot-dry-calm conditions, were found most PM10 pollution conducive in the valley when combined with a set of synoptic counterparts. These synoptic types are featured with the influence of eastward migrating continental high pressure system and westerly troughs, or a ridge extending northwest towards coastal northern NSW or southern Queensland from the Tasman Sea. The method and results can be used in air quality research for other locations of NSW, or similar regions elsewhere.
Keywords
PM10 pollution; local meteorological pattern; synoptic circulation type; self-organising map (SOM); air pollution conduciveness; data clustering; data visualisation; open-cut mining valley
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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