AMTD

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions

AMTD

Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss.

1867-8610

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/amt-2016-405

Estimation of Dust Downfall Time in Dusty Days using the Correlation between PM10 and Sunphotometer Data

Zolfaghari Nikanjam

Samira

¹ Khalesifard

Hamid Reza

² ³ Abedini

Yousefali

¹ ³

Department of Physics, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, 38791-45371, Iran

Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, 45137-66731, Iran

Center for Climate Change and Global Warming, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan 45137-66731, Iran

22 02 2017

2017 1 8

2017

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This article is available from https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2016-405/

The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2016-405/amt-2016-405.pdf

Urban air pollution has become a serious challenge in all societies. Nowadays, pollutants are measured by various tools and devices, including local particulate measurement instruments and ground-based remote sensing devices. This paper aims to estimate dust downfall time in dusty days of Zanjan city using the data obtained from ground-based aerosol sampling device and sunphotometer. The particulates with the size of less than 10 micrometers (PM10) were measured by ground-based measurement device in the height of 3 meters above the ground, while aerosol optical depth (AOD), which represents the amount of aerosols in vertical column of atmosphere, was measured by sunphotometer. According to correlation coefficient diagram, PM10 and AOD reached a maximum of 2, 6, 3 and 3 hours in dusty days of 9, 10, 24 and 25 June 2010. In other words, dust downfall took 2, 6, 3 and 3 hours respectively in the aforementioned days. Keywords: Downfall, dust, sunphotometer, correlation