Smoke Pollution in Urban Areas

Looks like the PM monitor is offline or something
Its a flatline


https://airquality.ie/readings?station=EPA-13&dateFrom=09+Jan+2021&dateTo=10+Jan+2021


Is ozone not a summer traffic problem ?

magicbastarder

also created by photocopiers. maybe there was a lot of photocopying going on in bray...

mickuhaha

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Certainly doesn't look moderate, I wouldn't want to be living in that.

Looks can be deceiving. That could be fog or steam from a factory. Unless you test it you won't know what's in the air.

Thelonious Monk

mickuhaha wrote: »

Looks can be deceiving. That could be fog or steam from a factory. Unless you test it you won't know what's in the air.

Are there many factories in downtown Bray?

highdef

Due to the cold weather yesterday, most of the country was covered in a thin layer of very very cold air at the surface with warmer air above. The very cold air contained some frozen moisture and it partly condensed leaving a thin layer of mist hugging the ground. Attached is a photo I took shortly after sunrise yesterday morning, taken from a drone in North Kildare with the view looking south across the plains of Kildare, with the Dublin/Wicklow mountains in the clear air above in the distance.

It's not smog.

mickuhaha

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Are there many factories in downtown Bray?

No but there is a river right beside it. So fog can easily form here.

magicbastarder

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

https://mobile.twitter.com/CAugustenborg/status/1347956142987767815

Bray today. That's just awful.

the office (which i don't go into anymore) is a fairly tall one out leopardstown direction. it's quite common to see a brown haze over dublin on cold mornings, due to the temperature inversion; we'd have been looking into it from above it but at a very shallow angle.

whether or not its pertinent, it's interesting to note how humid the weather has been over the last five or ten years. we used to be occasionally able to see the cooleys/mournes but that became less common as the years went on. i was in the office during the big freeze in 2010 and the air was so clear the mournes looked like they could have only been 20km away (the covering of snow clearly helped with visibility too).

senordingdong

mickuhaha wrote: »

No but there is a river right beside it. So fog can easily form here.

That's a fair point.

But can anyone tell me, does fog impede the dispersal of smoke?

highdef

senordingdong wrote: »

That's a fair point.

But can anyone tell me, does fog impede the dispersal of smoke?

If fog is present, this usually means that there is calm or fairly calm body of moist cold air at the surface with a layer of warmer air above. This is called an inversion. Cold air is denser than warm air so the same mechanism would keep the smoke within the confines of the inversion.

mickuhaha

senordingdong wrote: »

That's a fair point.

But can anyone tell me, does fog impede the dispersal of smoke?

No but it has been shown to prevent it from lowering to the ground. The dangerous gases tend to not lower and mix with the fog.

Paddycaddy

Great photo

beachhead

senordingdong wrote: »

This is part of the problem, the instruments have too large of an area to cover.
I expect the station in bray is not on the main street.

Only businesses on the main street.The traffic light system causes a build up of traffic.The bigger problem is smoking fuel used in the town with abandon.

2lazytogetup

the weather might aggravate the pollution in Bray, but we cant blame the weather. That sounds like US Republican party type of talk.

If there are two climate zones, a cold air and a warm air above bray in that photo, its probable that the pollution gets stuck in the bottom air mass and thus affects us worse.

This reminds me of Paris. in the middle of summer, the pollution cant escape due to air masses and it gets very bad.

I hear Enniscorthy is the same, the polluted air cant escape. It would be cynical to say, well the problem is the air flow, not the pollution.

magicbastarder

i remember 'seeing' a fireworks display in enniskerry. all the smoke from the fireworks hung about at the bottom of the village and obscured the fireworks after a few minutes.

BattleCorp

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Are there many factories in downtown Bray?

Probably smoke from junkies cooking up.

skooterblue2

BattleCorp wrote: »

Probably smoke from junkies cooking up.

"In a world you could have become anything....... you decided to become a junkie."