Air District-operated monitor - How-to

The relatively poor air quality over the past week or two is mostly due to recent meteorology conditions. The persistent high pressure over California right now leads to cooler temperatures, a low inversion layer, light winds (no storms), and poor vertical mixing. This meteorology pattern traps our area’s emissions within the area and closer to the ground, leading to higher measured concentrations. Hopefully this will ease up a bit later this week. I have passed along the information that the AirNow site is listing “Fairfield” on the Current AQI and AQI Loop of the “NowCast” values (as in the screenshot below). However, even though the…

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Modeled PM2.5 Removal by Trees in Ten U.S. Cities and Associated Health Effects

Urban particulate air pollution is a serious health issue. Trees within cities can remove fine particles from the atmosphere and consequently improve air quality and human health. Tree effects on PM2.5 concentrations and human health are modeled for 10 U.S. cities. The total amount of PM2.5 removed annually by trees varied from 4.7 tonnes in Syracuse to 64.5 tonnes in Atlanta, with annual values varying from $1.1 million in Syracuse to $60.1 million in New York City. Most of these values were from the effects of reducing human mortality. Mortality reductions were typically around 1 person yr-1 per city, but were as high as 7.6…

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