Some meteorological aspects of air pollution in Athens, Greece

Summary

The purpose of this paper is to examine some meteorological aspects of air pollution in the Athens area, Greece. Over recent years much attention has been directed to the importance of spells of weather in providing conditions that give rise to inversion of temperature at or near ground level, and hence to risks of severe incidents of air pollution. So, emphasis is given to the importance of anticyclonic conditions, associated with pronounced stability during ground level radiation inversions, when the same sampling sites show high concentration of both SO₂ and smoke. Fifteen years of surface and radiosonde data obtained from Hellinikon Airport Athens are used for a climatological base. The meteorology of high concentration episodes has also been examined and the synoptic characteristics for the onset and end of such episodes have been identified. Finally, trends of pollution episodes and calculation of an “air stagnation index” for Athens have been obtained, which give a predicting indication about the occurrence of high pollution concentration.