Air quality assessment using a multi-instrument approach and air quality indexing in an urban area

An air quality monitoring methodology is presented here employing an elastic backscattering Lidar, sunphotometer data, air quality indexing and meteorological data in the city of Sao Paulo (23 degrees 33' S, 46 degrees 44' W), Brazil, a typical Urban Area. This procedure was made aiming to gather information from different optical atmospheric techniques and add this information to the air quality data provided regularly by the environmental agencies in the city. The parameters obtained by the Lidar system, such as planetary boundary layer height, aerosol optical thickness and aerosol extinction and backscattering aerosol coefficients are correlated with air quality indexes/reports provided by state environmental control agencies in order to extend the database information concerning pollution assessment and abate policies. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.