Short and Long-Term Temporal Changes in Air Quality in a Seoul Urban Area: The Weekday/Sunday Effect

Abstract

We present evidence on the short-term differences in airborne pollution levels in terms of weekday/weekend (WD/WN) and weekday/Sunday (WD/Sun) intervals. To this end, we analyzed the hourly data of important pollutants (nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), ozone (O 3 ) and carbon monoxide (CO)) using the data acquired in the Yong-San district of Seoul, Korea from 2009 to 2013. For each week, the pollutant ratio (R w ) was estimated through either WD/WN or WD/Sun. Here, a week is defined as Sunday through Saturday, WD as Monday through Friday and WN as Sunday and Saturday. The WD/Sun R w geometric means (and range) were 2.02 (0.27-15.5) for NO, 1.29 (0.49-5.7) for NO 2 and 0.89 (0.17-7.2) for O 3 while the fraction of R w (WD/Sun) > 1 were 81, 71 and 38%, respectively. NO and CO levels were much higher in October through March (during Autumn and Winter) than April through September (during Spring and Summer), reflecting the potential effect of fuel consumption (e.g., in terms of use patterns of nationwide city natural gas). Thus, we provide a broader interpretation on the occurrence patterns of the major pollutants (e.g., NO, NO 2 , O 3 and CO) in relation to temporal changes in man-made activities.

Statistical Characteristics of Air Quality Index DAQx*-Specific Air Pollutants Differentiated by Types of Air Quality Monitoring Stations: A Case Study of Seoul, Republic of Korea

“…The different sources of O 3 , NO 2 , PM 10 , and PM 2.5 , associated chemical precursors, chemical reactions, and meteorological influences on their concentrations in the ambient air have already been studied in Seoul in many ways [6,14,22,23,25,26,[28][29][30][31][32][36][37][38][39][40]42,[45][46][47]55,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]. Therefore, they can be assumed to be known when discussing their annual cycles.…”

Tropospheric Ozone in Tehran, Iran, during the last 20 years

“…The available studies indicate that meteorological parameters such as wind direction, wind speed, temperature and relative humidity have a significant effect on changes in surface ozone concentration and its precursors in different months and seasons of the year (Elminir, 2005 ; Guicherit & Van Dop, 1977 ; Kovac-Andric et al, 2009 ; Pawlak & Jaroslawski, 2015 ; Szulejko et al, 2018 ). Duenas et al ( 2002 ) investigated the effect of meteorological parameters on ozone concentration in the Malaga region.…”