Air pollution climatology of Cochin for pollution management and abatement planning

Abstract

The prevailing atmospheric condition is very important in determining the dispersion and dilution and thereby the resulting concentration of air pollutants, While high wind speed and stability conditions in general favour good inhaling of air pollutants conditions like inversion and calm winds cause for the build up of pollutants. In order to understand the different favourable and unfavourable conditions, some of the atmospheric aspects of air pollution are studied for the industrial city Cochin, situated on the west coast of India.

Being a coastal city the frequency of occurrence of inversions and isothermal is not very high. Low values of mixing heights are observed in the southwest parts of the city during early morning hours, The study of spatial variation of mixing heights has revealed for the first time, that a single value of mixing height at the normal point of observation cannot be taken as a representative value for the whole city.