Analysis of effects of meteorological factors on air pollutant concentrations in Ankara, Turkey

In big cities, the air pollution has become an important problem in parallel with the increasing energy use. The sources of the pollutants are the emissions from the industrial facilities, motor vehicles and heating systems. The climatologic factors play important roles on the concentration of the air pollutants. In this study, the relations between air pollutant (SO2, PM10, NO, NO2 and CO) concentrations and the meteorological factors (wind speed, temperature and relative humidity) were statistically analyzed for the period of November 2001 and April 2002. The multi-linear regression analysis was applied to quantify the relationship between the air-polluting elements and the climatic factors by using a SPSS program. The results of the analysis show that the concentrations of all the pollutants considered decrease with increasing wind speed. With the increasing temperature, SO2, PM10 and CO concentrations decrease. However, there is not a clear relation between temperature, and NO and NO2 concentrations. Changes in SO2, PM10, NO and NO2 concentrations with the changing relative humidity are insignificant. However, CO concentration increases with increasing relative humidity.