• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.377-397
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• 2005

A new box model is proposed to describe the dynamic trend of the spatially averaged concentrations of pollutants over a large urban area such as metropolitan Seoul. Being averaged temporally and spatially over a thresh-hold scales, the dynamics of the pollutant concentration becomes simple enough that the governing equation can be expressed in an explicit algebraic form as a function of several meteorological factors and the pollutant emission rate. The single most important meteorological factor is the wind speed dominating the daily variations of the pollutant concentrations. Given the meteorological data from the surface station in the metropolitan Seoul, the model concentration shows excellent agreement with observations from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 2000: the modeling uncertainty, for example, of $NO_2$ concentrations, defined as mean differences between the model concentrations and observations is $16\%$ of the model concentrations. Even for $PM_{10}$ of which secondary sources are considered to be very important and simple box model is irrelevant to, the model performance turns out good, modeling uncertainty being about $32\%$.

• Particle and aerosol research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.91-104
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• 2019

In this study, hourly measurements of $PM_{2.5}$ and its major chemical constituents such as organic and elemental carbon (OC and EC), and ionic species were made between January 15 and February 10, 2018 at the air pollution intensive monitering station in Gwangju. In addition, 24-hr integrated $PM_{2.5}$ samples were collected at the same site and analyzed for OC, EC, water-soluble OC (WSOC), humic-like substance (HULIS), and ionic species. Over the whole study period, the organic aerosols (=$1.6{\times}OC$) and $NO_3{^-}$ concentrations contributed 26.6% and 21.0% to $PM_{2.5}$, respectively. OC and EC concentrations were mainly attributed to traffic emissions with some contribution from biomass burning emissions. Moreover, strong correlations of OC with WSOC, HULIS, and $NO_3{^-}$ suggest that some of the organic aerosols were likely formed through atmospheric oxidation processes of hydrocarbon compounds from traffic emissions. For the period between January 18 and 22 when $PM_{2.5}$ pollution episode occurred, concentrations of three secondary ionic species ($=SO{_4}^{2-}+NO_3{^-}+NH_4{^+}$) and organic matter contributed on average 50.8 and 20.1% of $PM_{2.5}$, respectively, with the highest contribution from $NO_3{^-}$. Synoptic charts, air mass backward trajectories, and local meteorological conditions supported that high $PM_{2.5}$ pollution was resulted from long-range transport of haze particles lingering over northeastern China, accumulation of local emissions, and local production of secondary aerosols. During the $PM_{2.5}$ pollution episode, enhanced $SO{_4}^{2-}$ was more due to the long-range transport of aerosol particles from China rather than local secondary production from $SO_2$. Increasing rate in $NO_3{^-}$ was substantially greater than $NO_2$ and $SO{_4}^{2-}$ increasing rates, suggesting that the increased concentration of $NO_3{^-}$ during the pollution episode was attributed to enhanced formation of local $NO_3{^-}$ through heterogenous reactions of $NO_2$, rather than impact by long-range transportation from China.