Analysing air pollution meteorology

In a summary of air quality data from cities in the United Kingdom for summer 1996 Deacon (1997) outlines the importance of each of the main urban pollutants and reasons for their geographical distribution. Data used by Dea- con are obtained from the National Air Quality Information Archive which is found on the World Wide Web at http://www.aeat.co.ukl
netceniaqarchiveiarchome.htm1. It is managed by the Department of the Environment and the National Environmental Technology Centre (NETCEN) and is continually updated. The archive contains hourly means, 24-hour means, maximum hourly and short-period peak con- centrations for UK automatic monitoring sites and summary statistics for all locations. Data for 87 sites are included and for many of the sites seven pollutants (ozone, oxides of nitro- gen, sulphur dioxide, particulates and carbon monoxide) are recorded. The data are con- tained in hypertext files which means that they can be easily (freely and legally) downloaded on to a floppy disk and read into a spreadsheet package. This then permits presentation, ma- nipulation and analysis. Many studies have shown an association between meteorology and atmospheric pollutant concentrations and ob- served relationships can vary with different pollutants. Real data allow the examination of the universality and strength of meteorology- air pollutant relationships. This paper outlines some of the common methods employed for analysing these relationships at a single location.