Fuzzy logic modeling of air pollution during Chinook winds

The occurrence of Foehn winds in the city of Calgary is due to the nearby proximity of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The Foehn winds bring warm weather during the winter months and are described locally as "Chinooks", a Blackfoot Indian term meaning snow eaters. Despite the increased wind speed during a Chinook, air pollution levels increase. A novel approach to modeling air pollution during a Chinook was developed using fuzzy logic. The Fuzzy c-Means method for system classification was used to identify the Foehn wind. As well, Modified Learning from Examples was used to predict surface ozone concentration. The identification of the occurrence of the Chinook wind was based on changes in humidity, and temperature increase. Key factors in air pollution for Calgary are ventilation components such as wind speed. The new fuzzy logic model developed in this work predicts the ozone concentration based on hourly wind speed and wind direction. The new model shows good agreement with the data and captures the trends in ozone concentration during Foehn wind conditions. Furthermore, this work shows that fuzzy logic can be a powerful tool in air pollution modeling.