Proceeding of 1st International Conference on Environmental Protection and Disaster RISKs
Proceeding of 1st International Conference on Environmental Protection and Disaster RISKs
Part One
29 – 30 September 2020
Sofia, Bulgaria
Sofia 2020
The 1st International Conference on Environmental Protection and
disaster RISKs took place on 29 – 30 September 2020 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Part One of the proceeding book presents texts on the following topics:
Air Pollution, Climate and Health; Biodiversity; Informatics, Remote
Sensing, High Performance Computing and GIS for Environmental
Monitoring and Management.
Editors:
Georgi Gadzhev
Nina Dobrinkova
ISBN 978-619-7065-38-1
е-ISBN 978-619-7065-39-8
National research program
Environmental protection and minimization of unfavorable events
and natural disasters hazards
The general Program objectives are carrying out fundamental and applied
studies aiming at ensuring sustainable, favorable and safe living environment for
the population of the Republic of Bulgaria
Other specific Program objectives are applied studies – elaboration, on the bases
of the knowledge, generated by the fundamental studies of:
1. Systems for forecasting of unfavorable and catastrophic natural phenomena;
2. Early warning systems
3. Systems assisting the actions during catastrophic events and disasters;
4. Long-term strategies and measures for preventing and overcoming of
unfavorable and catastrophic phenomena;
5. Enriching the knowledge about mechanisms of biodiversity loses in Bulgaria
and the Black Sea in climate change conditions, their connections with local human
activities, possible pathways for mitigation and adaptation to negative consequences.
Enhancing the qualification of the scientists and developing of up-to date research
infrastructure, Dissemination of the scientific results, Transfer of knowledge to the
decision making bodies (elaboration of scientifically robust strategies and programs
for sustainable government) and Promoting multi-disciplinary partnership between
research teams from different scientific fields are also part of the general Program
objectives.
Expected results
Fundamental results:
1. Generation of new knowledge about the processes in the atmosphere,
hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere in regional and local scales, about their
interactions and their impact on quality of life, health and ecosystem status.
2. Accounting for the multi-scale nature of the processes.
3. Tracking of the main mechanisms and pathways for forming the characteristics
the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere and respectively their
impact on quality of life, health and ecosystem status and the genesis of different
natural disasters.
4. Applied results:
5. Evaluation of the spatial/temporal variability (mapping) of the unfavorable
events risk: extreme seismic events with a big reccurrence period, extreme
temperatures, bad air and water quality, draughts, floods, storms, hail, icing, fires,
geological disasters, biodiversity loses, etc.
6. Systems for forecasting of unfavorable and catastrophic natural phenomena;
7. Early warning systems;
8. Early warning systems for ecosystem changes with elements of worsening of
the living environment or bio resource or other ecosystem services loss;
9. Systems assisting the actions during catastrophic events and disasters;
10. Long-term strategies and measures for preventing of unfavorable and
catastrophic phenomena, worsening of the living environment or bio resource or
other ecosystem services loss;
11. Strategic measures for emission reduction aiming at reduction of the health
risks and impact on ecosystems.
12. Elaboration of comments and recommendations for the National action plan
for adaptation to climate changes.
NATIONAL GEOINFORMATION CENTER
BIODIVERSITY
216 Peniophora Proxima (Peniophoraceae, Basidiomycota): Newly Recorded
for the Bulgarian Mycota / Aneta Lambevska-Hristova, Svetlana Bancheva
221 Applicability of Control Region of Mitochondrial DNA for Assessment of
Turbot Populations Along the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast / Petya Ivanova,
Nina Dzhembekova, Ivan Atanassov, Krasimir Rusanov, Violin Raykov,
Ivelina Zlateva, Maria Yankova
INTRODUCTION
Sea surface temperature (SST) is the temperature of the extremely thin inter-
face between the ocean and the overlying atmosphere, which controls heat and
gas exchange. SST is also the longest and most widely measured parameter in the
ocean (Emery, 2015). In the Black Sea, it influences the water circulation and eco-
logical condition of the basin and has an impact on the temperature of the Cold
Intermediate Layer (CIL). The temperature of the surface layer and SST respond
most quickly to the atmospheric impacts, which is the reason why SST experiences
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Winter and Summer Variability and Trends of Modis...
century, the Black Sea surface temperature had been constantly increasing due to
climate change. Sakalii and Başusta (2018) analysed SST data covering the period
1982-2015 and predicted the Black Sea SST until 2100. They found out that SST
increased with a rate of 0.64°C per decade thus conforming to the worst climate
change scenario. By the end of 21stcentury, the relative increase of the average SST
was predicted to be 5.1°C.
Moreover, SST spatial variations can be used as an indicator for the large- and
mesoscale water dynamics. For example, SST data were used to explore the Black
Sea heat balance underpinning the relevance of the fundamental oceanographic
issue about how close the SST reproduces the air temperature (Esbensen and Reyn-
olds, 1981; Gulev, 1994). Stanev and Staneva (2001) demonstrated that large ar-
ea-dependent differences could exist between the SST and air temperature, creating
an important eddy-dominated component of the ocean-atmospheric heat exchange.
Finally, SST exerts an impact on the ocean primary productivity through both
physical effect on water stratification (which in turn affects nutrient availability)
and its biological effect on plankton metabolic rates. The rise of global mean SST
over the past century is linked with both decreases and increases in primary pro-
ductivity depending on the time period and the region (Belkin, 2016). Oguz (2005)
suggests that climate plays a crucial role in the Black Sea ecosystem state fluc-
tuations. During the 1980s and 1990s, the existing atmospheric and hydrological
processes, together with nutrient supply, led to an enhanced plankton productivity,
which ultimately resulted in an increased jellyfish production and a longer over-
fishing period. On the other hand, a decreasing trend in Chlorophyll a and primary
production has been observed worldwide as SST increases, suggesting that reduced
phytoplankton biomass in the Black Sea ecosystem, hence its recovery, is not solely
a factor of diminished nutrient loading (McQuatters-Gollop et al., 2008).
Therefore, the proposed study aim to assess the spatial SST variability on sea-
sonal and interannual scales as well as relevant long-term trends making use of
remote sensing data, and to detect variability cycles possibly related to global tele-
connection patterns.
Figure 1. Scheme of the study domain. Location of points, for which seasonal
SST time series were derived, are illustrated as coloured rings as follows: coastal
stations in blue, inner shelf ones in red, outer shelf in green, open sea in violet
In order to achieve the study aims, mean winter and summer climatic fields are
constructed by averaging the monthly gridded fields over the time-span of interest
(entire study period or separate years within it). Seasons are defined as three-month
periods: winter includes January, February and March, and summer - July, August
and September.
Furthermore, the SST normalized anomaly (referred hereafter as anomaly)
(˚C) is calculated using the following formulation:
(1)
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Nadezhda Valcheva, Violeta Slabakova
where is the seasonal mean for each year, – climatic seasonal mean for
the entire 17-year period, – respective standard deviation. The overall anom-
aly is computed by averaging the seasonal normalized anomaly over appropriate
number of years. Spectral analysis was performed applying Fast Fourier Trans-
formation on the mean seasonal SST scalar time series using estimates of spectral
density as mean values of periodogram.
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Winter and Summer Variability and Trends of Modis...
Figure 2. Winter (left) and summer (right) mean SST (°C) climatic spatial
distribution over the western Black Sea for 2003-2019
With this respect, the analysis of seasonal time series derived for locations in
near-shore (coastal), inner and outer shelf, and open sea can be particularly useful.
Therefore, 23 points were selected normal to the general exposure of the shore (Fig.
1). In Table 1 seasonal SST minima and maxima for mentioned areas as well as the
maximum and average temperature differences are summarized. This allows for
more thorough examination of the SST spatial variability.
and open sea regions experience significant fluctuations of 1.5-3.8°C. In summer, the
opposite takes place as the coastal waters were heated more than the offshore ones.
However, the difference is so minor (less than an order of magnitude compared to the
winter one) that it is not greater than a couple of tenths of a degree (Table 1, Fig. 3).
From hydrodynamic point of view, the open sea waters are part of a large scale
circulation cell, namely the western gyre, and the small spatial variability can be
attributed to the more intense mixing that takes place there. On the other hand,
the water flow in shelf and coastal areas is mainly governed by the mesoscale
circulation features, which defines the greater spatial variability observed. In
winter, it is still more uniform due to the intensified circulation, while in summer
the pattern may considerably differ between areas due to circulation instability and
presence of eddies. Interannual variability of zonal temperature differences is much
Figure 3. Time series of winter (A) and summer (B) SST climatic means obtained
for zonal stretchesfor2003-2019: coastal (C), inner shelf (S1), outer shelf (S2)
and deep sea (D). Respective linear trends are represented with dashed line
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Winter and Summer Variability and Trends of Modis...
more pronounced than the meridional ones, in winter in particular. For this season,
the range is largest in the beginning – 2003-2004 (about 3°C) – and the middle of
the study period – 2010-2011 (about 3.5°C) – whereas it is the smallest in 2007
(0.5°C). Thus, 2010-2011 data sustain the hypothesis for decoupling between open
sea and periphery. The variability of summer zonal temperature differences appears
to be more uniform with a steady decreasing trend.
Several authors (e.g. Oguz et al., 2003; Stanev et al., 2014) suggested that the
erosion of the Black Sea upper layer stratification is mainly associated with the
atmospheric warming of the sea surface and winter SST can be used as indicator of
the cooling intensity (Piotukh et al., 2011). With this respect, the warmest winters
were those of 2007, 2014 and 2016 (SST maxima of 7.9-8.6°C), as well as the
winters of 2009-2010 for the open sea area with absolute maximum of 8.7°C (Fig.
3A). During such winters, the cooling of surface waters is insufficient leading to
limited ventilation of the upper layer and shrinking of cold intermediate layer. Such
phenomena were reported in 2011 and 2015-2016 (Stanev et al., 2019; Valcheva
et al., 2020). On the other hand, the coolest winters were in 2006, 2012 and 2017
when SSTs in near-shore waters dropped to 4.3-4.8°C and in open sea areas – to
6.8-7.7°C, which assisted the recovery of the vertical stratification. The warmest
summers took place in 2010, 2012 and 2016 when SSTs reached 25°C.This suggests
that periods of the SST rise and fall alter every 5-6 years. Moreover, the fluctuations
are synphase in all areas (especially well pronounced for summer, see Fig. 3B)
except for winters of 2008-2010. Besides, the winter SST fluctuations get smoother
in offshore direction.
Both winter and summer SSTs exhibit increasing long-term trends (Fig. 3).
Linear approximation predicts almost uniform increase of the winter SSTs of 0.06-
0.07°C yr-1for all zonal areas, while the summer ones tend to vary in somewhat
wider range – 0.05-0.07°C yr-1 – as the near-shore SSTs rise is more pronounced.
These values are in agreement with the findings of Sakalii and Başusta (2018) and,
having in mind those reported by Ginzburg et al. (2004), it seems that during 2003-
2019 SSTs have grown with a lower rate compared to the two preceding decades.
Furthermore, spatial distribution of the anomaly calculated using (1) averaged
over the study period is presented in Fig. 4. It can be seen that the summer anomalies
(ranging within ±0.6°C) are more than ten times greater than the winter ones
(roughly ±0.04°C). While the summer anomalies field is smoother and resembles the
mean climatic SST distribution, the winter one shows a more varied aspect. Thus,
the water flow from the northwestern shelf was marked by negative summer SSTs
anomalies at the same time that the warming took place mainly in the open sea area
(positive anomalies within the western gyre in particular). Through the process of
entrainment, these warmer waters had contributed to the positive anomaly observed
on the southern shelf and adjacent coastal waters. Nevertheless, small negative SST
anomaly is present within the middle part of the shelf (~- 0.2°C).
15
Nadezhda Valcheva, Violeta Slabakova
Figure 4. Winter (left) and summer (right) spatial distribution of the average
SST normalized anomaly (°C) over the western Black Sea for 2003-2019
As for the winter SST anomaly field, the negative anomaly can be ob-
served in deep sea area; there is neutral anomaly over the larger part of the
shelf and positive one over certain spans of the middle and mostly southern
shelf (especially in front of Burgas Bay). The slight cooling of the open sea
surface might have contributed to the reduced SST growth rate during the
last 15-20 years. As a whole, the result suggest that the trend of decoupling
between the basin periphery and deep sea region, detected by Shapiro et al.
(2010) and attributed to the climate change, is still present in first two de-
cades of the 21stcentury.
The cycle of SST interannual variability suggested above agrees with previous
studies (e.g. Oguz et al., 2006; Capet et al., 2012), which imply the existence
of teleconnection between Black Sea regional atmospheric condition and large
scale atmospheric pattern driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
More specifically, this refers to a sequence of cold and mild winter cycles with
approximately 5-year duration that roughly follows the NAO positive and
negative cycles. Similar fluctuations were detected for mixed layer temperature
(Valcheva, 2018) and cold intermediate layer thickness (Valcheva et al., 2020). In
attempt to confirm this finding with the SST dataset used in this study, a spectral
analysis of seasonal time series was performed. The result revealed that the
largest spectral density corresponds to the highest frequency fluctuations of two
years. However, the second peak indicates an8-year cycle of variability, which is
more discernable for the winter time series. Such quasi-decadal fluctuations agree
with the observed peak in 8-10 year band of the winter mean NAO index power
spectrum, which was found to enhance particularly over the second half of the
20th century (Polonsky et al., 2004).
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Winter and Summer Variability and Trends of Modis...
CONCLUSIONS
The study dealt with the spatio-temporal variability and related long-term
trends of winter and summer sea surface temperature derived from MODIS remote
sensing data. Thus, climatic SST field reveals the main features of typical seasonal
hydrodynamics: in winter the temperatures vary between 6.2°C in near-shore zone
to about 8°C in the open sea presenting a marked narrow transition zone of strong
horizontal gradients, whereas in summer relatively cooler waters coming from
the northwestern shelf mixed with warmer ones (SST~24.5°C) as they flow in the
domain due to instability of the large scale circulation. It was confirmed existence
of quasi-stable anticyclonic mesoscale features, such as Burgas and Kaliakra eddies
on the coastal side of the Rim current, as well as the process of entrainment of open
sea waters in the shelf and near-shore zone, which are being spread to the north.
In summer, spatial temperature variability ranges in less than 0.7°C, i.e. three
to four times smaller compared to winter (2.6°C). In meridional direction, SST
increases southward. This increase is more pronounced in coastal and shelf
areas, particularly in winter – about 2-3°C. In terms of zonal flow, the winter
SST increases eastward, while the summer ones – from northwest to southeast.
Interannual variability of zonal temperature differences is much more pronounced
than the meridional ones, in winter in particular.
With respect to the increased atmospheric warming of the sea surface and use of
winter SST as indicator of the cooling intensity, warmest and coolest winters have
been identified –2007, 2014 2009-2010, and 2016 (7.9-8.7°C); and 2006, 2012
and 2017 (4.3-4.8°C). Both winter and summer SSTs exhibit increasing long-term
trends; there is almost uniform increase of the winter SSTs of 0.6-0.7°C per decade
for all zonal areas, while the summer ones tend to vary in somewhat wider range –
0.5-0.7°C per decade. The results suggest that during 2003-2019 SSTs have grown
with a lower rate compared to the two preceding decades.
Furthermore, spatial distribution of the averaged normalized anomalies reveals
that the summer anomalies (±0.6°C) are more than ten times greater than the winter
ones (±0.04°C). While the summer anomalies field is smoother and resembles the
mean climatic SST distribution, the winter one shows a more varied aspect. As a
whole, the outcome confirms the trend of decoupling between the basin periphery
and deep sea region. Finally, the spectral analysis of seasonal time series confirmed
the existence of a quasi-decadal SST variability cycle, which agrees with the
observed peak of the winter mean NAO index power spectrum.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
17
Nadezhda Valcheva, Violeta Slabakova
REFERENCES
Belkin, I. (2016). Chapter 5.2: Sea surface temperature trends in large
marine ecosystems. In IOC-UNESCO and UNEP (2016). Large Marine
Ecosystems: Status and Trends, United Nations Environment Programme,
Nairobi, 101-109.
Brown, O. & Minnett, P. J. (1999). Modis Infrared Sea Surface Temperature
Algorithm. Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document, Version 2.0, modis.
gsfc.nasa.gov/data/atbd/atbd_mod25.pdf.
Capet, A., Barth, A., Beckers, J.-M. & Grégoire, M. (2012). Interannual
variability of Black Sea's hydrodynamics and connection to atmospheric
patterns. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography,
77–80, 128-142.
Emery, W. J. (2015). Sea Surface Temperature. Encyclopedia of Atmospheric
Sciences 2nd Edition, Vol. 1, 136-143.
EOS Data Product Handbook Volume 2 (2000), Parkinson, C. L. &
Greenstone, R. (Eds). NASA Goddard Space Flight Greenbelt,
Maryland, 256.
Esbensen, S.K. & Reynolds, R.W. (1981). Estimating monthly averaged
air-sea transfers of heat and momentum using the bulk aerodynamic
method. J. Phys. Oceanogr. 11, 457–465.
Fu, G., Baith, K. & McClain, C. (1999). The SeaWiFS Data Analysis System.
Proceedings of the 4th Pacific Ocean Remote Sensing Conference, 73–79.
Ginzburg, A. I., Kostianoy, A. G. & Sheremet, N. A. (2004). Seasonal and
interannual variability of the Black Sea surface temperature as revealed
from satellite data (1982-2000). Journal Marine Systems. 52, 33–50.
Ginzburg, A. I., Kostianoy, A. G. & Sheremet, N. A. (2008). Sea surface
temperature variability. The Black Sea Environment. The Handbook of
Environmental Chemistry. Vol. 5: Water Pollution, Part 5/Q, Kostianoy
A. G. and Kosarev A. N. (Eds.). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg,
255–276.
Gulev, S.K. (1994). Influence of space-time averaging on the ocean-
atmosphere exchange estimates in the North Atlantic midlatitudes. J.
Phys. Oceanogr. 24, 1236–1255.
McQuatters-Gollop, A., Mee, L.D., Raitsos, D.E. & Shapiro, G.I. (2008).
Non-linearities, regime shifts and recovery: The recent influence of
climate on Black Sea chlorophyll. Journal of Marine Systems 74,
649–658.
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19
Nadezhda Valcheva, Violeta Slabakova
Nadezhda Valcheva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7690-8731
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IO-BAS)
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Violeta Slabakova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3089-0126
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IO-BAS)
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
20
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Yavor Chapanov
Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research Institute –
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (CAWRI-BAS)
Abstract. The Sun is the main source of energy for all Earth’s geosystems,
including climate, weather, mean sea level, winds, precipitation, and etc., mainly
through Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), whose variations during solar activity cause
various changes on the Earth surface. Climate processes, interactions between
atmosphere-and ocean system, various local, regional and global hydrological
cycles are the main mediator between solar activity and a number of geophysical
processes on the Earth surface. The temperature at the Earth surface is widely used
climate index, whose variations consist of significant seasonal oscillations, trend
and long-term cycles. The variations of temperature over Bulgaria is investigated
by means of several long time series of meteorological observations. The changes
of seasonal components of temperature and long-term oscillations are analyzed
in narrow frequency bands by means of the Partial Fourier Approximation. These
temperature variations are compared with the corresponding cycles of solar activity
in order to create long-term forecast models.
Keywords: solar activity; temperature; climate variations
INTRODUCTION
The solar activity affects terrestrial systems by means of direct radiation over
Earth surface, solar wind, and the solar magnetic field. The TSI cycles are the main
source of climate indices variations. The solar wind directly affects Earth magnetic
field, ionosphere and atmosphere. The variations of solar magnetic field modulate
solar wind and cosmic rays in the frame of the heliosphere. The cosmic rays (CR)
near Earth are modulated by Earth magnetic field variations, too. Recently a new
mechanism of climate modulation, based on cosmic rays variations, has been pro-
posed (Kilifarska et al., 2005, 2008; Kilifarska 2011; Velinov et al., 2005). This
mechanism is based on chain processes near tropopause by ozone production, tem-
perature variations, followed by vertical winds and water content change. The last
step of this chain affects surface temperature, because the atmospheric water is
one of the most powerful greenhouse gas. This model provides an explanation for
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Yavor Chapanov
the cascade processes in which CR, whose total energy is relatively small, cause
climatic effects with much more energy. The solar activity cycles modulate CR
directly by the heliosphere and indirectly by the geomagnetic field changes, whose
effect is visible mainly at high latitudes. A significant part of cosmic rays consists
of charged solar particles, whose interaction with the Earth atmosphere is preceded
by focussing effect of geomagnetic field over polar regions, while the most ener-
getic galactic cosmic rays affect all Earth regions. The cosmic ray intensity exposes
antiphase variations to the TSI variations. The TSI is strong during solar activity
maximum, when the cosmic ray intensity has minimum and vice versa. So, during
TSI maxima, the warming processes occur on Earth surface, and during TSI min-
ima the thermal cycle amplitudes are amplified, due to cooling effects of cosmic
rays. The variations of Earth temperature are affected directly by TSI cycles and
indirectly by solar wind and solar magnetic field. These solar cycles are presented
by the indices of TSI, sunspot numbers (also known as Wolf’s number) and North-
South (N-S) solar asymmetry.
The knowledge of temperature variations and cycles is important in various
fields of human activity. An aspect of this knowledge is assessment of agromete-
orological conditions in national agricultural lands. The determination of statisti-
cally significant tendency of average annual air temperature is important for spring
crop growing (Georgieva, Shopova and Kazandjiev, 2019; Kazandjiev, Shopova,
Georgieva, 2018). The climate change and coming with them abiotic stressors, a
consequence of extreme weather conditions affect agriculture plant productivity
(Slavcheva-Sirakova et al., 2020; Shopova, Alexandrov and Todorova, 2019). The
goal of this study is to determine the thermal trends and changes of seasonal and
long-term components of temperature at several Bulgarian meteorological stations,
their connection with the cycles and harmonics of solar activity in order to improve
long term forecasts.
DATA
The used data consist of centennial time series of monthly temperature variations
from 4 Bulgarian stations in Vidin, Pleven, Razgrad, Dobrich and Sofia (Fig.1).
The solar data are presented by the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) variations and
N-S solar asymmetry (Fig.2). The estimated TSI for the last 400 years is based on
the NRLTSI2 historical TSI reconstruction model (Kopp et al., 2016; Lean, 2010;
Coddington at al., 2016). The index Sa of N-S solar asymmetry is calculated by
formula
, (1)
where AN is the total area of the sunspots over Northern solar hemisphere and AS -
the total area of the sunspots over Southern solar hemisphere. The data of sunspot
area since 1874 are observed by the Royal Greenwich Observatory and merged after
22
Variations of Temperature Over Bulgaria and Their...
1976 with the US Air Force (USAF) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) data by D. Hathaway.
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Yavor Chapanov
METHODS
The time series spectra are determined by the well-known Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT). The periodical variations are derived from the data by means of
partial Fourier approximation (PFA) based on the Least-Squares (LS) estimation
of Fourier coefficients. The Partial Fourier approximation F ( t ) of time series is
given by
(2)
where P0 is the period of the first harmonic, t0 - the mean epoch of observations,
f0, f1, ak and bk are unknown coefficients and n is the number of harmonics of
the partial sum, which covers all oscillations with periods between P0/n and P0.
The application of the LS estimation of Fourier coefficients needs at least 2n+2
observations, so the number of harmonics n is chosen significantly smaller than
the number N of sampled data fi. The small number of harmonics n yields to LS
estimation of the coefficient errors. This estimation is the first essential difference
with the classical Fourier approximation. The second difference is the arbitrary
choice of the period of first harmonic P0, instead of the observational time span,
so the estimated frequencies may cover the desired set of real oscillations. This
method allows a flexible and easy separation of harmonic oscillations into different
frequency bands by the formula
(3)
2ðm1 2ðm2
≤ ωk ≤ (4)
P0 P0 ,
After estimating the Fourier coefficients, it is possible to identify a narrow
frequency zone presenting significant amplitude, and defining a given cycle.
Then this cycle can be reconstructed in time domain as the partial sum limited
to the corresponding frequency bandwidth. Doing this for terrestrial and solar
time series, we shall identify their respective cycles, isolate and compare the
common ones.
The used time series cover 105-year overlapped time interval for the period
1900.0 – 2005.0. Each time series consist of 1260 monthly data points. The PFA
performs estimation of 150 harmonics with the accuracy better than 0.07°C for
temperature; 0.02 for N-S solar asymmetry and 0.5mW/m2 for TSI.
The seasonal amplitude of temperature variations AT for each year is calculated
by
, (5)
where the Tmax is the maximal summer temperature of a given station, and Tmin – the
minimal winter temperature.
RESULTS
The main results of this study are described by analyses of FFT spectra; seasonal
and long-term variations of the temperature; thermal trends due to global warming;
influence of TSI and N-S solar asymmetry harmonics on temperature oscillations
and variations of seasonal components.
FFT spectra
The time series spectra are calculated by the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and
they are shown in Fig. 3. It is remarkable that the temperature spectra are almost
coherent for interannual oscillations, especially for the stations from North Bulgar-
ia. All time series have significant oscillations with periods 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.4, 4.0,
5.2, 7.0 and 10.5 year, so a high correlation between the long-term variations of
temperature is expected.
The original and long-term time series don’t match the temperature rate con-
nected with the global warming. Their rates of linear trends are almost zero or
negative. The only exception is the positive rate of seasonal amplitude after 1975,
whose value is between +0.010 and +0.15°C/yr (Fig. 4 and Table 1).
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Yavor Chapanov
The harmonics of N-S solar asymmetry have good agreement with temperature
cycles with periods from bands 4.8-5.0yr; 8.7 – 9.5yr and 11.7 – 13.1yr (Fig.7).
These solar cycles are connected with the solar magnetic field variations and
corresponding influence on the heliosphere and galactic cosmic rays, whose effects
on temperature oscillations is explained by the model of Kilifarska.
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Variations of Temperature Over Bulgaria and Their...
CONCLUSIONS
The temperature variations tor the period 1900-2005 from 5 Bulgarian stations
are analysed and compared with some solar harmonics and cycles. The linear
trends, seasonal components and long-term oscillations of the temperature are de-
termined. Almost all of periodic components of observed temperature are highly
correlated, including the seasonal variations and long-terms. The linear trends of
the centennial time series of temperature don’t match the tendency of temperature
rise due to the global warming. The global warming signature is discovered in var-
iations of seasonal amplitudes after 1975, where the amplitude rates are between
0.10°C/yr and 0.15°C/yr. The 11-year Schwabe-Wolf and 22-year cycles of solar
magnetic field (Hale cycles) affect temperature variations with time delay between
0 and 3 years, where the common effect on temperature is about 0.7°C. The TSI
and N-S solar asymmetry harmonics have good agreement with the variations of
temperature and seasonal amplitudes in narrow frequency bands, whose periods are
between 3.6 and 20.6 years. These results may improve climatic models and some
long-term forecasts.
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Variations of Temperature Over Bulgaria and Their...
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
“Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters”, approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
REFERENCES
Coddington, O., Lean, J.L., Pilewskie, P., Snow, M., Lindholm, D. (2015).
A solar irradiance climate data record. Bull. American Meteorological
Soc. 97(7), 1265 – 1282.
Georgieva, V., Shopova, N., Kazandjiev, V. (2019). Assessment of conditions
in South Bulgaria for spring crop growing using agrometeorological
indices. AIP Conf. Proc., Vol. 2075, Iss. 1, id.120014
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Yavor Chapanov
Yavor Chapanov
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-3554
Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research Institute
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (CAWRI-BAS)
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: The habitants in Bulgarian capital city are unfortunately still exposed
to high levels of particulate matter (PM) despite a lot of efforts made by the
government and municipality during the last decades. A high resolution modelling
using ADMS-Urban system was carried out for prolonged one month (January
2014) event with elevated levels of PM concentration for Sofia region. Four main
emission sources (point industrial, domestic heating, roads and non-well defined
transport) were taken into account for this study. Although this type of modelling
accounts only for the local sources and has some deficiency, it can be very useful
tool for estimation of the contribution of each source type to the concentration field
and also allows to simulate different scenarios for future emission reduction that can
help the authorities in decision making.
Keywords: Air quality modelling, PM pollution in Sofia, ADMS-Urban model.
INTRODUCTION
Air pollution causes great harm to European citizens’ health and about 400 000 people
die prematurely due to excessive air pollutants such as dust particles, nitrogen dioxide
and ozone each year (EU Special Report, 2018). Around one-quarter of Europeans
living in urban areas were exposed to air pollutant levels exceeding some EU air quality
standards and up to 96% of EU citizens living in urban areas were exposed to levels of
air pollutants considered by the WHO as damaging to health (EEA, 2018). Lost years
of healthy life in some EU Member States are similar to countries often associated with
poor air quality, such as China and India and unfortunately Bulgaria is the leader in this
bad statistics with almost 2.5 lost years of healthy life from ambient air pollution per
hundred inhabitants (EU Special Report, 2018).
The air quality in big cities is substantially affected by anthropogenic pollutant
emissions and weather patterns. Most harmful for the Bulgarian big cities like Sofia
and Plovdiv is particulate matter (PM) pollution during the winter according to
the national reports on the state and protection of the environment for 2010-2014.
33
Margret Velizarova, Reneta Dimitrova
Plenty of work in the field of the regional air quality modelling has been made in
Bulgaria in the last two decades (Gadzhev et al., 2014a, b; Georgieva et al., 2015,
2017; Syrakov et al, 2015, 2016), most of the simulations are based on the US
EPA WRF (Skamarock et al., 2008) - CMAQ (Byun and Schere, 2006) system.
Advantages of these models include the ability to use temporally and spatially
varying meteorology and model chemical reactions, but due to used parametrizations
of physical processes however, these models have restrictions of grid resolution
(finest is usually 1 km). ADMS-Urban system (CERC, 2017) is a city-scale model
that resolves concentration fields explicitly representing the near-field features of
the dispersion of emissions with very high resolution (meters). Furthermore it can
be nested within the regional model CMAQ and this approach accounts for the full
range of temporal and spatial scales (Stoker et al., 2012), which will be subject of
our future work.
A lot of efforts were made by the government and Sofia municipality during
the last decades, but unfortunately the capital city habitants are still exposed to
high levels of PM10 (defined according European Union DIRECTIVE 2008/50/
EC; EEA, 2008). High resolution modelling is carried out for prolonged one
month event with elevated levels of PM concentration for Sofia region. The
case study was selected based on observations with persistent elevated levels
of PM in January 2014. The main goal is to estimate the abilities of the ADMS-
Urban to capture the concentration pattern using available detailed emission
inventory developed for Sofia and fill the missing details of concentration of
the pollutants.
Model set-up
The domain in this study covers Sofia city and suburbs, approximately 38 km by
32 km, with grid resolution of 50 m (Figures 1a-d). Spatial data entered into ADMS-
Urban should be in a Cartesian coordinate system measured in metres in one of the
available geographic projections. Different number of vertical levels can be exploited,
but high number increases the computational time significantly. We have used only
2 levels for this study as we consider only surface concentration. All different types
of sources – point (industrial stacks), roads, domestic heating and not well-defined
transport are mapped into the selected domain. We have used in this study detailed
emission inventory developed for Sofia municipality, published and described in
details in Sofia municipality reports (2017; 2019). The emissions required very
detailed shape description for line and area sources, while point sources are defined
by their geographical coordinates transferred in the study domain. All sources were
described into details and their locations are presented in Figure 1(a-d).
Figure 1. Map for simulations with all types of emission sources included –
(a) point (industrial stacks), (b) roads, (c) domestic heating and (d) not well-
defined transport; and (e) wind rose at Druzhba site for January 2014
One month of simulations for January 2014 was selected based on 10-years of record
of hourly concentrations of PM10 taken from the official air quality network (EEA,
http://eea.government.bg/kav/), for the stations located in Sofia (Druzhba, Nadezhda,
Pavlovo, Hipodruma, Orlov most). In addition, concentrations of PM2.5 at Hipodruma
35
Margret Velizarova, Reneta Dimitrova
station were used. The mountain site Kopitoto, located near Sofia, was used as a
background station in this study. The meteorological conditions (measured also at each
site) were prescribed from Druzhba site, as it consists full record of hourly data with
a few missing records only, which were reconstructed based on interpolation method
integrated into the model, taking the available values from the nearest hours. The
meteorological variables used in this study are hourly data for wind speed (minimum
0.75 ms-1 is required) and direction, temperature, relative humidity, incoming solar
radiation (when data are missing for cloud cover). The local meteorological conditions
for the simulated period were low wind velocity (less than 2 ms-1) and predominant
south-eastern and north-eastern flow. Wind rose for January 2014 is shown in Figure
1e. ADMS-Urban was run daily providing 24-h average concentration outputs for the
entire domain and prescribed locations, corresponding to the measurement sites.
ADMS-Urban allows a lot of additional options that we applied in this study.
Sofia valley has a complex topography that affects the pollution transport and this
option was included with the model runs. The effect of complex terrain is modelled
by changing the plume trajectory and dispersion to account for disturbances in
Monin-Obukhov length. Turbulence is considered using three sets corresponding to
unstable (convective), near neutral and stable conditions, based on Monin-Obukhov
length and corresponding to different diffusivity coefficients. Loss of the airborne
concentration of pollutant occurs by dry and wet deposition. Wet deposition did
not apply in this study as there was no precipitation data for this period. The plume
rise module predicts the trajectory, enhanced spread and inversion penetration
of a buoyant jet or plume, given the conditions at the source and in the external
environment. This module was applied to the industrial point sources requiring
additional data for the temperature, flow velocity and geometry of the stack (height
and diameter). The basic street canyon module was used for the road sources which
required additional information such as the coordinates of each road segment and
averaged parameters for road width and canyon height. Only primary pollutants
were modelled, chemical reactions were not included in this study.
Ovtscha Kupel, Suhodol, Vitosha, Bakston and Manastirski Livadi, which are
included for PM2.5 , but not for PM10 simulations.
Figure 4 presents the pollution due to the main busy roads with most significant
contribution to central city area and ring road around Sofia. Note, that the newly developed
north tangent from the ring road is not included into simulations, as the last available
developed emission inventory, used in this study, covers previous periods (2014 for PM10
and 2017 for PM2.5). The most polluted areas with contribution between 80 -100 % due
to traffic are nearby boulevards “Tsarigradsko shose”, “Slivnitsa”, “Todor Aleksandrov”,
“Botevgradsko shose”, suburbs Gorublene – Pancharevo, the south ring road in proximity
of Vitosha mountain, as well as the north-western ring road, which gives connection
between big residential areas – Nadezhda, Obelya, Lyulin and “Struma” motorway.
population living in the area and registered vehicles. This source provides between
50 – 80% of the total concentration in the described big residential regions and the
Sofia airport area.
The impact of the industrial point sources is much lower (less than 50%) in
comparison to the other sources (Figure 6). The main contribution they have in the
northern part of the Sofia valley where a cluster of objects is located in the industrial
city area (in proximity to Nadezhda residential area), power plants “Iztok”, “Sofia”,
“Lyulin” and big industrial sources in Novi Iskar.
In spite of this deficiency, simulations are useful for estimation of the contribution
of the local sources at the selected receptors (Figure 8). It is obvious that stations
Pavlovo, Hipodruma and Orlov most mostly account for the traffic pollution (more
40
Study of one Month Event of High Pmpollution...
than 50%). Nadezhda and Druzhba stations are located in a residential areas and
high contribution (~50%) have the not well-defined area transport and only less
than 2% due to the point industrial sources. The domestic heating produces almost
double concentration for PM2.5 in comparison with PM10 (see Hipodruma site). The
contribution of domestic heating to PM10 concentration is also visible at all sites,
but predominant at Nadezhda and Druzhba, most likely because they are located in
the suburbs in proximity to satellite villages around Sofia.
CONCLUSIONS
In spite of efforts made by the Sofia municipality, the air quality is still poor, espe-
cially related to PM (Sofia municipality report, 2017; 2019). The most favourable for
smog formation are meteorological conditions during the winter, due to formation of
prolonged inversions and low turbulence under calm conditions related to non-dynamic
(anticyclonic) weather. One month with very high PM pollution registered by the of-
ficial air quality stations was simulated by ADMS-model. Although this type of model-
ling account only for the local sources, it can be very useful tool for estimation of the
contribution of each source type to the concentration field, and it allows to simulate
different scenarios that can help the authorities in the decision making. Only primary
pollutants (PM10 and PM2.5) were modelled (chemical transformations are not included)
with meteorological hourly data measured at Druzhba station, which can be comment
as a deficiency of the study. But a lot of additional options available with the sophisti-
cated Gaussian model (ADMS-Urban) allow to make advanced estimation of the local
pollution, much better than using other models from this type for air quality assessment.
VI) This work has pointed out the need for updated and reliable detailed
emission inventory for Sofia, including all different types of sources and pollutants.
Developed new atmospheric air quality management program for Sofia municipality
and future work on this topic can contribute significantly to improve air quality
modelling for the region.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers
№ 577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
We acknowledge the provided access to the e-infrastructure of the NCDSC – part of
the Bulgarian National Roadmap on RIs, with the financial support by the Grant
No D01-221/03.12.2018.
REFERENCES
Biggart, M., Stocke, J., Doherty, R.M., et al. (2020). Street-scale air quality
modelling for Beijing during a winter 2016 measurement campaign. Atmos
Chem Phys, 20(5), 2755-2780.
Byun, D. & Schere, K.L. (2006). Review of the Governing Equations, Computational
Algorithms, and Other Components of the Models-3 Community Multiscale Air
Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System, Applied Mechanics Reviews, 59, 51-77.
CERC, (2017). CERC_ADMS-Urban4.1.1_User_Guide.pdf.
European Court of Auditors, (2018). Air pollution: Our health still insufficiently
protected. Report N°23.
European Environment Agency (2008). Directive 2008/50/EC of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 on ambient air quality and cleaner
air for Europe. OJ L 152, 11.6.2008, 1–44.
European Environment Agency (2018). Environmental indicator report 2018, EEA
No 19/2018, Luxembourg.
Gadzhev, G., Ganev, K., Miloshev, N., Syrakov, D. & Prodanova, M., (2014a).
Some basic facts about the atmospheric composition in Bulgaria - Grid computing
simulations, 8353 LNCS, 484-490.
Gadzhev, G., Ganev, K., Miloshev, N., Syrakov, D. & Prodanova, M., (2014b).
Analysis of the processes which form the air pollution pattern over Bulgaria,
8353 LNCS, 390-396.
Georgieva, E., Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Etropolska, I. & Slavov, K. (2015).
Evaluating the performance of WRF-CMAQ air quality modelling system
in Bulgaria by means of the DELTA tool. IJEP, 57(3-4), DOI: 10.1504/
IJEP.2015.074512.
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Study of one Month Event of High Pmpollution...
Georgieva, I., Gadzhev, G., Ganev. K., Melas, D. & Wang, T. (2017). High
Performance Computing Simulations of the Atmospheric Composition in
Bulgaria and the City of Sofia, Cybernetics and Information Technologies, 17(5),
DOI: 10.1515/cait-2017-0053.
Hood, C., MacKenzie, I., Stocker, J., Johnson, K., Carruthers, D., Vieno, M. &
Doherty, R. (2018). Air quality simulations for London using a coupled regional-
to-local modelling system. Atmos Chem Phys, 18, 11221-11245.
Skamarock, W.C., Klemp, J.B., Dudhia, J., et al. (2008) A Description of the
Advanced Research WRF Version 3. NCAR Technical Note, NCAR/TN-475+STR
Sofia municipality, (2017). Atmospheric air quality management program of capital
municipality for the period 2015-2020 – reduction of emissions and reach of the
established norms for fine particles PM10. (in Bulgarian).
Sofia municipality, (2019). Program for supplementation of the program
Atmospheric air quality management program of capital municipality for the
period 2015-2020 - reduction of emissions and achievement of the established
norms for fine particles PM10, by indicators fine particles with size up to 2.5
microns and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. (in Bulgarian).
Stocker, J., Hood, C., Carruthers, D. & McHugh, C. (2012). ADMS-Urban:
developments in modelling dispersion from the city scale to the local scale.
IJEP, 50(1/2/3/4), 308-316.
Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M. & Georgieva, E. (2015). Performance of the Bulgarian
WRF-CMAQ modelling system for three subdomains in Europe. Física de la
Tierra, 27, 137-153.
Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Georgieva, E., Etropolska & I., Slavov, K. (2016).
Simulation of European air quality by WRF–CMAQ models using AQMEII-2
infrastructure. J Comput Appl Math, 293, 232–24.
Margret Velizarova
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Reneta Dimitrova
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5931-8713
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
43
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
Satellite derived air pollution data are nowadays increasingly used in
combination with comprehensive chemical transport models (CTM) for better
description of the atmospheric composition and for improved forecast of
pollutants concentrations at ground level (Benedetti et al., 2009, Park et al., 2011,
Gadzhev et al., 2015). In the last few decades, major efforts are put on improving
modeled aerosol parameters, as aerosols play significant role in the Earth’s
energy budget and climate. Aerosols in the atmosphere are product of complex
interactions between sources and chemical transformations at different scales,
determining their high variability in space and time (Boucher, 2015). Satellites
provide information for AOD that is a measure of the aerosol loading in the entire
atmospheric column. They could provide information for sources, typically not
included in the models, such as dust storms and wild fires. Together with aerosol
parameters (AOD, AAI etc.) some gaseous parameters are retrieved. In the article
44
Satellite Data Assimilation of Air Quality...
output. It is well known that models usually underestimate the particulate matter
concentrations. The assimilation of satellite retrieved AOD is supposed to improve
this shortcoming.
Assimilation technology
For BgCWFS we consider aerosol data provided by GOME-2 instrument on
board of MetOpA, MetOpB and MetOpC satellites. An objective analysis scheme
(called further ANALIZ) is used for combining model estimated and satellite
retrieved data (AOD and columnar densities of NO2 and SO2). The object analysis
scheme is original one, based on calculation of autocorrelation functions and
application of spline interpolation.
The analyzed data is used to calculate the correction factors between model
estimated and satellite assimilated parameters – different factors for AOD, NO2
and SO2. The gridded values of the correction factors are then used to correct
the concentrations of different pollutants (Fig.1). The correction factor of AOD is
applied to all particle variables and is one and the same for all levels. The correction
factor of NO2 and SO2 is applied to the respective variable profiles. In such a way
new fields for the satellite passage hour are produced serving as initial condition for
further CMAQ calculations.
RESULTS
As far as only limited amount of pollutants are monitored and the measurements
are made at the ground, mainly, a post-processing of obtained data is performed
consisting in extracting the surface values of several key pollutants as well as
producing compositions as PM10, PM2.5, AOD and columnar values of NO2
(NO2_C) and SO2 (SO2_C). This is made for both sat- and mod-runs, results saved
as so called ARCH-files (ARCHs and ARCHm, respectively).
The detailed investigation of the results of the satellite data assimilation is object
of another publication. Here, only effects of the assimilation will be demonstrated
exploiting the difference “sat-mod” of several variables, for different days and
domains. The main behavior of this difference is as follows:
● In first hours of the day, the differences remaining from the previous day are
relatively small, with positive and negative values.
● At hour Hs (satellite overpass fixed to 09:00 UTC) a disturbance appears like
a simultaneous area source of pollution (similar to fire or other area accident)
● The shape and the structure of this disturbance are quite irregular and it
appears approximately over the territory covered by satellite measurements (but
not over the whole area).
● Similarly to pollution distribution, the disturbances evolves with time and
move as if due to atmospheric circulation.
● Usually, its maximal values decrease and for some variables become small or
disappear by the end of the day.
47
Dimiter Syrakov, Maria Prodanova1, Emilia Georgieva
● Often, the disturbances remain to the next day, especially for the bigger
modelling domains.
An example of this behavior is shown on Fig. 2 (satellite overpass hour Hs=9:00
UTC).
Of course, the details of this common behavior of the “sat–mod” difference vary
very much with the different days, different variables, different domains, and for
different seasons, as well.
the differences “sat-mod” are around zero. At Hs, fragmentary spots appear with
positive and negative values, predominantly in the first two modelling domains.
At h=Hs+1, the positive spots practically disappear and the negative ones decrease
their maxima. Possible reason for this behavior is the high reactivity of NO2. Fig.
4 shows the time evolution of the dNO2 spatial distribution in domain Bulgaria.
Fig. 5 shows the time evolution of dSO2 fields for domain Bulgaria on
07.02.2019. The decrease of the differences with the time is smaller than for August
2017; small positive differences remains for the next day.
Interesting fact is the appearance of high values of dSO2 around the upper
border of the domain. This is example of influence of the senior domain - satellite
data assimilation from domain BP is transferred to domain BG via the boundary
conditions. Such an effect is observed for other days and pollutants.
49
Dimiter Syrakov, Maria Prodanova1, Emilia Georgieva
The final example for the effect of satellite data assimilation is the evolution of
ozone surface concentrations. Like the other parameters directly influenced by the
satellite data assimilation (PM, NO2, SO2) the dO3 behavior is also characterized
by “explosion” (higher values with respect to previous hour), but at time Hs+1,
i.e. one hour later than satellite passage. This delay is due to the fact that ozone
is a secondary pollutant and some time is necessary for reactions (mainly with
already changed NO2) leading to this deviation from the usual daily evolution of
the changes “sat-mod”. The spots with differences dO3 are quite irregular on the
maps, mainly positive, and their decrease lasts much longer time, often continuing
during the next day. Increase of spot maxima during the following one or two hours
after Hs is also possible. In Fig. 6, one can see the time evolution of dO3 during
the first hours of the day (with remains from the previous day), the appearance of a
new disturbance at h=Hs+1=10:00 UTC due to assimilation of satellite NO2 data,
the increase of its intensity and further decrease several hours later.
CONCLUSIONS
Satellite retrieved atmospheric chemistry data were assimilated for the first
time in the Bulgarian Chemical Weather Forecast System. The off-line version of
the modelling system was run over five nested domains for two months (August
2017 and February 2019) in two modes – without satellite data (mod-run), and
with satellite data assimilation for AOD and columnar NO2 and SO2 (sat-run). The
preliminary analysis of the results in this work was focussed mainly on the evolution
of the fields of the “sat-mod” differences of several parameters (AOD, PM10, NO2
and SO2). The main behaviour of these differences is demonstrated. The deviations
are also outlined and commented. Further investigations are required to understand
the advantages and the weaknesses of the BgCWFS-sat modelling system, using
both comparisons with observations and model inter-comparisons to data from air
quality networks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was carried out in the framework of the project SIDUAQ, funded by the
European Space Agency (ESA) through contract No. 4000124150/18/NL/SC.
Deep gratitude is due to ESA services providing data from GOME-2 instrument
on board of MetOp-A, B and C satellites.
REFERENCES
Benedetti A., J.-J. Morcrette, O. Boucher, A. Dethof, R. J. Engelen, M.
Fisher, H. Flentjes, N. Huneeus, L. Jones, J. W. Kaiser, S. Kinne, A. Man-
gold, M. Razinger, A. J. Simmons, M. Suttie, and the GEMS-AER team
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Satellite Data Assimilation of Air Quality...
51
Dimiter Syrakov, Maria Prodanova1, Emilia Georgieva
Dimiter Syrakov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5057-8490
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Maria Prodanova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7395-9314
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Emilia Georgieva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8466-4976
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Georgi Gadzhev
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography –
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NIGGG-BAS)
INTRODUCTION
The Air Quality is a key element for the well-being and quality of life of
human beings. According to the World Health Organization, air pollution severely
affects the health of European citizens. There is increasing evidence of adverse
effects of air pollution on the respiratory and the cardiovascular system as a result
of both acute and chronic exposure. In particular, a significant reduction of life
expectancy by a year or more is assumed to be linked to long-term exposure
to high air concentrations of particulate matter (PM). There is considerable
concern about impaired and detrimental air quality conditions over many
areas in Europe, especially in urbanized areas, despite 30 years of legislation
and emission reductions. Current legislation, e.g. the Ozone daughter directive
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Georgi Gadzhev
MODELING TOOLS
The present study is based on air quality simulations with US EPA Models-3 air
quality modeling system, consisting of 3 models:
• CMAQ v.4.6 - Community Multi-scale Air Quality model, http://www.
cmaq-model.org /, (Denis et al. 1996, Byun, Ching 1999, Byun, Schere 2006), the
Chemical Transport Model (CTM);
• WRF v.3.2.1 - Weather Research and Forecasting Model, http://www.
wrf-model.org/ , (Skamarock et al. 2007), the meteorological pre-processor
to CMAQ. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a next
generation meso-scale numerical weather prediction system designed to serve
both operational forecasting and atmospheric research needs. It is an evolutionary
successor to the MM5 model. The creation and further development of WRF is
due to the collaborative efforts of several US institutions like NCAR, NOAA,
NCEP and others. The WRF is a fully compressible and non-hydrostatic model
with terrain-following hydrostatic pressure coordinate. The grid staggering is
the Arakawa-C type. One can find more info on http://www.wrf-model.org/
index.php;
• SMOKE v.2.4 - Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions Modelling
System, http://www.smoke-model.org/ , (Coats, Houyoux 1996, Houyoux,
Vukovich 1999, CEP 2003), the emission pre-processor to CMAQ. CMAQ
demands its emission input in specific format reflecting the time evolution of
all pollutants accounted for by the chemical mechanism used (CB-IV in this
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Preliminary Results for the Recurrence of Air Quality...
case). Emission inventories are used as row data for anthropogenic emission
processing. The inventories are made on annual basis for big territories; many
pollutants are estimated as groups (VOC and PM2.5 for instance). Preparation
of emission input to a Chemical Transport Model requires emission processing.
Such emission processing component in EPA Models-3 system is SMOKE but
it is partly used, here, because it’s quite strong relation to US emission sources
specifics. In this study SMOKE is used only for calculating biogenic (BgS)
emissions and for merging Area sources (AS), Large point sources (LPS) and
BgS-files into a CMAQ emission input file. The area source emissions and the
large point source emissions are prepared by the interface programs AEmis and
PEmis.
In the System, WRF model is driven by the NCEP data in GRIB-2 format with
space resolution of 1°×1° and 6-hour time resolution. TNO inventory for 2005
(Denier van der Gon et al., 2010) is exploited partly for Bulgaria domain, TNO
being the Netherlands’s Organization for Applied Scientific Research. For Bulgaria
itself and for the other Bulgarian domains, the National inventory for 2010 as
provided by Bulgarian Executive Environmental Agency is used. That means TNO
inventory is used only for the territories outside Bulgaria in the mother CMAQ’s
domain.
Figure 1. Five computational domains (CMAQ domains are nested in WRF ones)
The nesting capabilities of WRF and CMAQ are used to downscale the
simulations from European region to the Sofia city area. The resolution of the
mother domain (Europe) is 81 km, big enough as to correspond to met-data space
resolution. Four other domains are nested in it and in each other – Balkan Peninsula
(27km resolution), Bulgaria (9 km), Sofia municipality (3 km) and Sofia city (1
km) as shown in Fig. 1. The climatic data is used for chemical boundary conditions
following the presumption that the errors introduced by this assumption will
decrease quickly to the centre of the domain due to the continuous acting of the
pollution sources. All other domains receive their boundary conditions from the
previous domain in the hierarchy.
The post-processing program XtrCON extracts part of the pollutants for archiving
and further handling. Only surface values of the most important pollutants are saved
55
Georgi Gadzhev
- 8 gases and 11 aerosols (including PM10 and PM2.5). Part of these pollutants
is more or less monitored and they are referred in the European legislation with
the respective thresholds. For the moment it presents 4 main pollutants - Ozone,
NO2, SO2 and PM10 which are used to calculate the Air Quality Indices (AQI).
Calculation of the Air Quality (AQ) impact on human health and quality of life
in Sofia city is the objective of the present study. The impact is calculated in the
terms of the so called AQI – an integral characteristic directly measuring the effects
of AQ on human health. The calculations are made on the basis of long term AQ
simulations, which make it possible to reveal the climate of AQI spatial/temporal
distribution and behaviour.
The AQI is defined as a measure of air pollution seen in the context of its impact
on human health. It provides an integrated assessment of the impact of the whole
range of pollutants on human health and is calculated based on the concentration of
various pollutants obtained from measurements or numerical modeling. The index
is defined in several segments (EPA, 2009), each of which is a linear function of the
concentration of each considered pollutant:
(1)
where:
I = the AQI,
C = the pollutant concentration,
– the concentration breakpoint that is ≤ C,
– the concentration breakpoint that is ≥ C,
– the index breakpoint corresponding to ,
– the index breakpoint corresponding to .
In that calculation the index falls in one of the ranges of the dimensionless scale.
In each range index values are associated with an intuitive colour code, a linguistic
description and a health description.
Pretty often in order to evaluate the air quality situation in European cities, all
detailed measurements are transformed into a single relative figure: the Common
Air Quality Index (CAQI) and this index have 5 levels using a scale from 0 (very
low) to > 100 (very high). The index is based on 3 pollutants of major concern
in Europe: PM10, NO2, O3 and will be able to take into account to 3 additional
pollutants (CO, PM2.5 and SO2).
One of the most commonly used air quality index is the UK Daily Air Quality
Index (Leeuw, F. de, Mol, W., 2005), also used in Bulgaria (Etropolska et al. 2010),
(Syrakov et al, 2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015), (Georgieva, I., 2014), (Georgieva
et al. 2015), (Georgieva, I. and Ivanov, V., 2017, 2018), (Ivanov, V. and Georgieva,
I., 2017) and (Gadzhev 2018).
56
Preliminary Results for the Recurrence of Air Quality...
RESULTS
Annual recurrence of AQI in “Low”, “Moderate” and “High” bands over
territory of Sofia city from 2015 to 2019 and average recurrence for the whole
period 2008-2019 (08-19):
Figure 2 demonstrate the spatial and diurnal variation of the annual recurrence of
Low band for the chosen hours 04:00, 12:00 and 18:00UTC for the chosen periods.
Here we have to mention that in the Low range the air is most clean, so high recurrence
values mean more cases with clean air (red colour) and lower recurrence values mean
(blue colour), less cases with clean air (worse AQ status). What can be noticed is: the
recurrence in Low range is different for all years at 04:00UTC.
Figure 2. Annual recurrence of AQI in “Low” band over territory of Sofia city from
2015 to 2019 and average recurrence for the whole period 2008-2019 (08-19)
57
Georgi Gadzhev
In 2015, 2018 and 08-19 at 12:00 UTC the recurrence in Low band is bigger
than this in 2016, 2017 and 2019. While at 18:00 UTC the higher recurrence is in
2015, 2018, 2019 and 08-19. The high polluted areas are the city centre at 04:00 and
two spots (Kostinbrod and Sofia airport) in 2019 and they are very well displayed
in figure.
Figure 3. Annual recurrence of AQI in “Moderate” band over territory of Sofia city
from 2015 to 2019 and average recurrence for the whole period 2008-2019 (08-19)
58
Preliminary Results for the Recurrence of Air Quality...
Figure 4. Annual recurrence of AQI in “High” band over territory of Sofia city from
2015 to 2019 and average recurrence for the whole period 2008-2019 (08-19)
59
Georgi Gadzhev
In Figure 3 and Figure 4 (Moderate and High ranges) - high recurrence values
means less favourable and respectively bad AQ status. It can be seen that most areas
with high recurrence of cases with lower AQ status are at noon in the whole domain
and mostly over the Vitosha Mountain in other hours. This is due to the intensive
O3 photo-chemistry reactions, the higher NO2 concentrations lead to production of
higher O3 concentration. The major NO2 sources in the city are the surface sources
(road transport). It can be seen at 18:00 UTC in 2016 and 2017 where over the
road network it leads to decreasing of O3 concentration and with that improving
the AQ status. Average for the 2008-2019 in Moderate band at 18:00 UTC it can
be also noticed about 10-20% recurrence with not so good AQ status over Vitosha
Mountain. Higher values over the Vitosha Mountain in the night and the afternoon
are due to the higher concentration of O3 in mountain areas and intensive ozone
transport from higher levels (intensive turbulence during midday). The behavior
of the surface ozone is complex. The O3 in Bulgaria is to a great extent due to
transport from abroad and above (Gadzhev et al. 2013 and Kaleyna et al. 2013a,
2013b, 2014). This is the reason why the O3 concentrations early in the morning
are smaller (less intensive transport from higher levels), and higher at noon and
afternoon (more turbulent atmosphere (more intensive transport from higher levels)
and O3 photochemistry).
The high recurrence of cases in Figure 4 with most polluted air (High band)
appears again in the city centre almost at all hours in all years. In the city centre
can be observed more than 20% "High" pollution in the night and 10% at the day.
Bad AQ status from the High band almost never disappears. In 2018 and mostly
in 2019 it’s make impression that the cases with more worse AQ status are much
higher than the other years, as the recurrence around the Kostinbrod, TPP Sofia and
Sofia airport can reach about 70% at the different time of the day.
At the plots for average for the 2008-2019 in High band can be seen that at all
hours there are places with worst AQ status where the recurrence is almost 20% of
all happenеd cases.
CONCLUSIONS
The simulations for Sofia city show that the air quality status of Sofia is not so
good (evaluated with a spatial resolution of 1km).
AQ status falls mostly in Low and Moderate bands, but the recurrence of cases
with High pollution is close to 20% mostly at the city center.
The recurrence of cases in Low and Moderate bands has been different for dif-
ferent years.
The pollution in the city is probably due to the surface sources like road trans-
port and also the TPPs in the city and Sofia airport.
Apart from these general features the climatic behavior of the AQI probabili-
ties is rather complex with significant spatial, seasonal and diurnal variability. The
60
Preliminary Results for the Recurrence of Air Quality...
areas with slightly worse AQ status are not necessarily linked to the big pollution
sources. Wide rural and even mountain regions can also have significant probability
for AQI from the Moderate range.
The hot spot in Sofia city, where index with higher impact (High band) is the
city center. The recurrence in High band is relatively high - about 20 % in the morn-
ing and 10% in the afternoon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bulgarian National Science Fund (grant DN-04/2/13.12.2016).
Special thanks are due to US EPA and US NCEP for providing free-of-charge
data and software and to the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific
research (TNO) for providing the high-resolution European anthropogenic
emission inventory.
REFERENCES
Bojilova R., Mukhtarov P., Miloshev N., (2020) Climatology of the Index
of the Biologically Active Ultraviolet Radiation for Sofia. An Empirical
Forecast Model for Predicting the UV-Index, Comptes rendus de
l’Acad´emie bulgare des Sciences, 73, 4, 2020, 531-538
Bojilova R., Mukhtarov P., (2019) Response of the electron density profiles
to geomagnetic disturbances in January 2005, Stud. Geophys. Geod., 63,
3, 436-444
Byun, D., Ching, J., (1999), Science Algorithms of the EPA Models-3
Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System. EPA
Report 600/R-99/030, Washington DC.
Byun, D., Schere, K.L., (2006), Review of the governing equations,
computational algorithms, and other components of the models-3
community multiscale air quality (CMAQ) modeling system. Appl.
Mech. Rev. 59, 51–77
CEP, (2003), Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emission (SMOKE) Modeling
System, University of North Carolina, Carolina Environmental Programs
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Chervenkov H., Slavov K., Ivanov V., (2019) STARDEX and ETCCDI
climate indices based on E-OBS and CARPATCLIM: Part one:
General description, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including
subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in
Bioinformatics), 11189 LNCS, pp. 360-367
Coats, C.J.,Jr., and Houyoux, M.R., (1996), Fast Emissions Modeling With the
Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions Modeling System, The Emissions
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62
Preliminary Results for the Recurrence of Air Quality...
63
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San Jose, R., J. Perez and R. Gonzalez, (2006), Air Quality Real-Time
Operational Forecasting System for Europe: an application of MM5-
CMAQ-EMIMO modeling system, in Brebia, C. (Ed.), “Air Pollution
XIV”, WIT Press, Southampton, Boston, 75
Skamarock et al., (2007), A description of the Advanced Research WRF
Version 2.
Sofiev, M., Siljamo, P., Valkama, I., (2006), A dispersion modeling system
SILAM and its evaluation against ETEX data. Atmos. Environ. 40, 674–
685
Syrakov, D., Etropolska, I., Prodanova, M., Ganev, K., Miloshev, N.,
Slavov, K., (2012), Operational Pollution Forecast for the Region of
Bulgaria, American Institute of Physics, Conf. Proc. 1487.
Syrakov, D., Etropolska, I., Prodanova, M., Slavov, K., Ganev, K.,
Miloshev, N., Ljubenov T., (2013), Downscaling of Bulgarian Chemical
Weather Forecast from Bulgaria region to Sofia city, American Institute
of Physics, Conf. Proc. 1561, 120-132.
Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Etropolska, I., Slavov, K., Ganev, K., Miloshev,
N., Ljubenov T., (2014a), A multy-domain operational chemical
weather forecast system, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including
subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in
Bioinformatics), 8353 LNCS, 2014, 413-420
Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Georgieva, E., Etropolska, I., Slavov, K., (2014b),
Impact of NOx emissions on air quality simulations with the Bulgarian
WRF-CMAQ modelling system, HARMO 2014 - 16th International
Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling
for Regulatory Purposes, Proceedings 2014, 187-190
Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Georgieva, E., Etropolska, I., Slavov, K.,
(2015), Impact of NOx emissions on air quality simulations with the
Bulgarian WRF-CMAQ modelling system, International Journal of
Environment and Pollution, 57, Issue 3-4, 2015, 285-296
Georgi Gadzhev
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-3554
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
64
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
The Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) height determines the volume in which
different gaseous and aerosol pollutants are mixed due to turbulent processes within the
atmosphere. To model the ABL height in urban environments is additional challenge
due to the specific physical and chemical characteristics which play important role
for pollutant dispersion, climate comfort, and weather forecasting (Chen et al., 2011;
Batchvarova and Gryning, 2006; Batchvarova et al., 2006; Batchvarova et al., 2011;
Rotach et al., 2005; Avolio et al., 2017). Specific studies on the city of Sofia including
remote sensing measurements are presented by Kirova&Batchvarova, 2017; Kolev
et al., 2016; Savov et al., 2016; Kolev et al., 2019. The combination of models and
particle counter measurements provides comprehensive information on both the
65
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
Experimental days
Measurements were performed during two typical summer days (7-8 June 2019),
characterized by relatively calm anticyclone weather, and four winter days of (18
– 21 December 2019) characterised with high level of pollution and occurrence of
fog in the morning hours. Particular behaviour of the aerosol concentrations was
noted on December 21, a day with foehn wind.
Application of models
The Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) is a numerical weather
forecasting and atmospheric simulation system designed for both research and
operational applications. The WRF model is used for a wide range of meteorological
applications from tens to thousands of kilometres. The purpose of applying the
WRF-GDAS model is to produce new atmospheric analyses using historical data
(available from 2004 to present) and to analyze current atmospheric conditions by
using Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS).
The Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLIT,
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ ready/hysplit4.htm), a Lagrangian dispersion model,
has been coupled (online) to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)
meteorological model in such a way that the HYSPLIT calculation is run as part of
the WRF-ARW prediction calculation (Ngan et al., 2015; Lin Su et al., 2015) . The
embedded HYSPLIT includes dispersion, trajectories, deposition (dry and wet),
etc. (Chen et al., 2011; Stein et al., 2015).
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Particulate Matter Characteristics...
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 7 June 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
The number of PM10 changes from 20 N/l in the morning hours to 10 N/l in the
afternoon, and of PM2.5 from 250 N/l to 100 N/l (Fig. 1a). The corresponding mass
concentrations for PM10 are from 25-30 µg/m3 to 5 µg/m3 in the afternoon and for
PM2.5 from 10-12 µg/m3 to 5 µg/m3 (Fig.1b).
WRF-GDAS model forecast for Boundary Layer Depth (Zi) over Sofia is 1200
– 1300 m (Fig. 2a). The model suggests prevailing wind from N (1-4 m/s) from 9
to 15 LT. HYSPLIT Backward trajectories of 1000, 2000 and 3000 m ending in
Sofia at 12UTC on June, 7 2019 are shown in Fig. 2b. Transport of air masses from
Morocco and Sahara desert at altitude of 3 km can be noted.
Dust concentrations of 20 µg/m3 forecasted by BSC Dust model at 4 km height
do not influenced the level of particulates measured in the urban surface layer.
NMMB/BSC Dust (Dust Forecast at 06UTC Friday 07 June) gives a higher con-
centration of about 20 µg/m3 in the layer between 3 and 6 km height forecasted over
Sofia (Fig. 3a). LON-Height cross-section and LAT-Height cross-section present
67
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
the distribution of dust concentration across North Africa and Europe (Fig. 3b). The
dashed line indicates the position of Sofia.
(a) (b)
Figure 2. Model results for Sofia (LAT 42.65; LON 23.38)
on 7 June (a) GDAS Stability plot and (b) HYSPLIT Backward trajectories
(a) (b)
Figure 3. NMMB/BSC Dust Forecast Concentrations (µg/m3)
at 06 UTC on 7 June (a) vertical profile and (b) LON&LAT-Height cross-section
68
Particulate Matter Characteristics...
Measurements on 8 June show that the number of PM10 is around 20 N/l with
max of 25 N/l from 9:30 to 10:30 LT and for PM2.5 the numbers are 220 in the
early morning hours and increase to 300-350 N/l from 9:30 to 10:30 LT, then fall
to 175 N/l after 12 LT (Fig. 4 a). The corresponding mass concentrations for PM10
are from 15 to 30 µg/m3. For PM2.5 the concentrations are around 10 µg/m3 before
12 LT and around 5 µg/m3 in the early afternoon (Fig. 4 b).
(a) (b)
Figure 4. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 8 June 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
(a) (b)
Figure 5. Model results for Sofia on 8 June (a) GDAS Stability plot
and (b) HYSPLIT Backward trajectories
(a) (b)
14 LT. Summary of measured and modelled parameters for the summer days is
given in Table 1.
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Particulate Matter Characteristics...
It can be noted that the measured particle number is higher on Saturday, 8 June,
despite the expected lower traffic contribution. Furthermore, the ratio highest/
lowest values is smaller on that day (PM2.5: 350/100 N/l), while on 7 June the
ratio is 250/50 N/l. Possible reason for these differences is the long-range transport
contribution (Fig. 4 and Fig. 6).
Winter 2019
Anticyclone synoptic circulation prevailed in the period 18-20 December 2019
causing low wind speed from SW-S, morning fog conditions in valleys and low
stratus clouds. Measured maximal temperatures were 10 oC and minimal - 0 oC.
No precipitation and no snow cover were measured in Sofia. Change of weather to
cyclone circulation starts from 20 December, leading to feohn wind from S-SW in
Sofia reaching 16 m/s, gusts up to 23 m/s and abnormally high temperatures of 15 oC.
Measurements on 18 December were performed from 8 to 14 LT under heavy
fog (observed relative humidity of 100 %) conditions and show number of PM10
of 200 N/l until 10 LST and lower values (100 N/l) in the afternoon. Registration
for PM2.5 shows 4500 N/l in the early morning hours, maximum of 5000-5500 N/l
(a) (b)
Figure 7. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 18 December 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
71
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
around 10 LT (related to morning rush hours and fog) and gradual decrease to 2500-
2000 N/l after 12 LT (Fig. 7a). The corresponding mass concentrations for PM10
(Fig. 7b) is from 220 µg/m3 at 8 LT, with max of 250-260 µg/m3 at 9:30-10:30 LT
and decrease to 100 µg/m3 in the early afternoon. The PM2.5 concentrations show
similar behavior: around 140 µg/m3 before 12 LT with, 160-170 µg/m3 at 10:30 LT
and decrease to 60 µg/m3 in the early afternoon. Summarized information of the
winter experimental days is given in Table 2.
GDAS model ABL height of maximum 200 m and stable to neutral stratification
over Sofia (Fig. 8a), constant SW-S wind of 1-4 m/s during the day. The 96-hour back-
ward trajectories of height 200, 500 and 1000 m show constant SW flow (Fig. 8b).
(a) (b)
Figure 8. Model results for Sofia on 18 December (a) GDAS Stability
plot and (b) HYSPLIT Backward trajectories
72
Particulate Matter Characteristics...
(a) (b)
Figure 9. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 19 December 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
GDAS ABL height over Sofia is below 200 m , stratification is stable to very stable
(Fig. 10a), and constant S-SE wind of 1-4 m/s during the day. The 96-hour backward
trajectories of height 200, 500 and 1000 m show SW flow from Sicily (Fig. 10b).
(a) (b)
Figure 10. Model results for Sofia on 19 December (a) GDAS Stability plot
and (b) HYSPLIT Backward trajectories
73
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
(a) (b)
Figure 11. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 20 December 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
(a) (b)
Figure 12. Daily variations in PM2.5 and PM10 on 21 December 2019,
measured as (a) particles per liter (N/l) and (b) concentration mass (µg/m3)
The last 2 days of the winter experimental campaign are peculiar in view of
particle concentrations and show the dynamic interplay between meteorology and
sources for the air quality in the city.
CONCLUSIONS
This study presents experimental results concerning the daily distribution of
the aerosol particles in the urban environment and the correlation to the synoptic
situations, meteorological parameters and ABL height. The analysis is based on
2 summer and 4 winter days of aerosol particles (concentration and number)
measurements with laser aerosol particle counters.
In summer, the ABL is high and the observed concentration of aerosol particles
is under the sanitary norms and changes two times from maximal to minimal values.
The maximum is related to intensive transport traffic along the Tsarigradsko shose
in the morning hours.
In winter, the ABL height is low the observed concentrations of aerosol particles
are higher than the norms for 18 and 19 December. The maximal values are 3 times
higher than the minimal and are related to fog conditions and intensive transport
75
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
traffic along the Tsarigradsko shose in the morning hours. On 20 and 21 December
the concentrations show peculiar changes with time related to Christmas holidays
and rare meteorological conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers
№ 577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Sci-
ence (MES) of Bulgaria (Agreement № D01-230/06.12.2018). The Contri-
butions of Kolarova and Kirova is supported by the project DN4/7 (Study
of the PBL structure and dynamics over complex terrain and urban area),
funded by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria. The authors gratefully
acknowledge the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provi-
sion of the WRF-GDAS Model used in this publication; the NOAA Air
Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT transport
and dispersion model. Some data and images used in the publication are
from the (NMMB/BSC-Dust or BSC-DREAM8b) model, operated by the
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (http://www.bsc.es/ess/bsc-dust-daily-
forecast/).
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Avolio, E., Federico, S., Miglietta, M., Lo Feudo, T., Calidonna, C.,
& Sempreviva, A. (2017). Sensitivity analysis of WRF model PBL
schemes in simulating boundary layer variables in southern Italy: An
experimental campaign. Atmospheric Research, 192, 58–71.
Batchvarova, E. & Gryning, S.-E. (2006). Progress in Urban Dispersion
Studies. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 84, No. 1-3, 57-67.
Batchvarova, E., Gryning, S.-E., Rotach, M. & Christen, A. (2006).
Comparison of modelled aggregated turbulent fluxes and measured
turbulent fluxes at different heights in an urban area. In: Air pollution
modeling and its application XVII, Borrego, C. and Norman, A.
(Eds.), Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers (NATO Challenges of
Modern Society series) 363-370.
Batchvarova E., Kolarova M., Veleva B., Neykov N., Neitchev P.,
Videnov P., Gamanov A., & Barantiev D. (2011). The atmospheric
boundary layer – parameterizations, observations and applications.
(2011) Bul. J. Meteo & Hydro, 16/1, 41-53.
Chen, F., Kusaka, H., Bornstein, R., Ching, J., Grimmon, C.S.B.,
Grossman-Clarke, S., Loridan, T., Manning, K.W., Martilli, A.,
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Particulate Matter Characteristics...
Miao, S., Sailor, D., Salamanca, F.P., Taha, H., Tewari, M., Wang,
X., Wyszogrodzki, A.A., & Zhang, C. (2011). The integrated WRF/
urban modelling system: development, evaluation, and applications
to urban environmental problems. Int. J.Climatol. 31 (2), 273–288.
Kirova, H. & Batchvarova, E. (2017). Mesoscale simulation of
meteorological profiles during the Sofia Experiment 2003.
International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 61, 2, 2017, 134-
147. DOI:10.1504/IJEP.10006760
Kolev, N., Savov, P., Evgenieva, Ts., Miloshev, N., Petkov, D., &
Donev, E. (2016). Summer measurements of atmospheric boundary
layer (ABL), aerosol optical depth (AOD) and water vapour content
(WVC) over Sofia (Bulgaria) 2010–2014. Compt. rend. Acad. bulg.
Sci., 69, 4, 421-429.
Kolev, N., Savov, P., Evgenieva, Ts., Miloshev, N., Gueorguiev,
O., Batchvarova, E., Kolarova, M. Danchovski, V., Ivanov, D. &
Petkov, D. (2019). Investigation of the atmospheric boundary layer
and optical characteristics of the atmospheric aerosols over Sofia in
summer 2016, 10th Jubilee International Conference of the Balkan
Physical Union, AIP Conference Proceedings 2075, 120004 (2019)
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Lin Su, Yuan, Z., Hung Fung, J. C., & Hon Lau, A. K. (2015). A
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37.
Ngan, F., Stein, A., & Draxler, R. (2015). Inline coupling of WRF–
HYSPLIT: Model development and evaluation using tracer
experiments. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 54, 1162–1176
Rotach, M. W., Vogt, R., Bernhofer, C., Batchvarova, E., Christen, A.,
Clappier, A., Feddersen, B., Gryning, S.-E., Martucci, G., Mayer,
H., Mitev, V., Oke, T. R., Parlow, E., Richner, H., Roth, Roulet,
M., Y.-A., Ruffieux, D., Salmond, J. A., Schatzmann, M. & Voogt,
J. A. (2005). BUBBLE – an Urban Boundary Layer Meteorology
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Savov, P., Kolev, N., Evgenieva, Ts., Vatzkitcheva, M., & Danchovs-
ki, V. (2016). Correlations between particle number concentrations,
boundary layer height, meteorological parameters and urban environ-
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Stein, A., Draxler, R., Rolph, G., Stunder, B., Cohen, M., & Ngan, F.
(2015). NOAA’S HYSPLIT Atmospheric transport and dispersion
77
P. Savov, N. Kolev, E. Batchvarova, H. Kirova, M. Kolarova
Plamen Savov
Department of Physics
University of Mining and Geology “St. Ivan Rilski”
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Nikolay Kolev
Department of Physics
University of Mining and Geology “St. Ivan Rilski”
Institute of Electronics
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ekaterina Batchvarova
Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research Institute
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Hristina Kirova
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Maria Kolarova
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
78
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: The thermal comfort is one of the main issues nowadays. The
implications from the modelled future climate projections also put a question of
the expected thermal environmental conditions. The objective of this paper is a
winter human discomfort study for Sofia and its surroundings. Data from numerical
simulations with Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model were used to
calculate a Wind Chill index, which describes the deviation from the winter thermal
comfort. This index depends on air temperature and wind, and it is categorized in
a 6-grade scale, which describes how far or close are the environmental conditions
from the human thermal comfort. Numerical experiments with combination
of different parameterization schemes for atmospheric boundary layer and
microphysical processes were carried out. Model performance for the temperature
and wind speed were used for estimation of the best model options for calculation
of the Wind Chill index.
Keywords: Wind chill index modelling, WRF model performance estimation
INTRODUCTION
The thermal comfort is one of the main issues nowadays. The implications
from the modelled future climate projections also put a question of the expected
thermal environmental conditions (Stocker et al., 2013) and related air pollution
(Gadzhev et al., 2014a, Gadzhev et al., 2014b, Gadzhev et al., 2012, Gadzhev et
al., 2011). The population of the cities increase more and more nowadays, which
entails the growth of the cities through the gradual amplification of urbanizing. That
intensify the urban heat island effect (Rizwan, Dennis & Chunho, 2008), change
the surroundings environment modifying the local circulations (Hidalgo, Masson,
& Gimeno, 2010), lead to implications in the precipitation distribution (Collier,
2006), etc. Therefore, the consequences from the increasing or decreasing of the
79
Vladimir Ivanov, Reneta Dimitrova
air temperatures become of bigger importance. The deviation from the thermal
comfort is expressed as a number called Wind Chill index, which depends on air
temperature, wind and/or relative humidity, and possibly from other parameters. It
is categorized in ordinal scale for deviation of the environmental conditions from
the thermal comfort for human beings (Cheng, Niu, & Gao, 2012). The thermal
discomfort for the territory of Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula is considered
in several studies. Some of them deal with observations (Ivanov & Evtimov,
2014a; Ivanov & Evtimov, 2014b). Their results show that the deviations from
the thermal comfort in Bulgaria could be significant from the human perspective.
Others, estimated by outputs from the regional climate model also show that the
Balkan Peninsula is subjected to heat-related illness (Ivanov, Gadzhev, Ganev &
Chervenkov, 2020).
The objective of this paper is a winter human discomfort study for Sofia and its
surroundings. The Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) model was
used for simulation of temperature and wind fields. Different parameterization
schemes for atmospheric boundary layer and microphysical processes were used
for estimation of the best model options for calculation of the Wind Chill index.
METHODOLOGY
Temperature and wind fields modelling
WRF is a mesoscale numerical simulation system for research and operational
forecasting of the atmospheric environment (WRFv3.9; Skamarock et al 2008).
Five nested domains in Lambert projection, with D1 at 9 km, D2 at 3 km, and three
at 1 km horizontal resolution (D3, D4, D5) and with hourly output, were selected.
The map with the modelling domains is shown in Figure 1. The bigger domain
D1covers the north and central parts of the Balkan Peninsula, the inner domain D2 -
mainly the territory of Bulgaria, the innermost domains: D3 - the Sofia valley, D4 -
Plovdiv region, D5 - Varna region. The study considers only the innermost domain
D3, which includes geographically the city of Sofia and its surroundings with com-
plex terrain. The model was implemented with 50 pressure-based terrain-following
vertical levels from the surface to 50 hPa. The initial and boundary conditions were
derived from the 0.25-degree NCEP Final Operational Model Global Tropospheric
Analyses (http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.2/) datasets available every 6 hours.
Data assimilation (fdda model option) was used for the outermost domains D1 for
all vertical levels and for domain D2 for the first 10 model levels above the ground.
The atmospheric physics options are responsible for the including of the sub-grid
atmospheric and surface processes, which cannot be solved explicitly by the model
- the planetary boundary layer (PBL), microphysical processes, convection, short-
wave, and longwave radiation processes, land-air interaction. The WRF physics
package included: the new version of Radiative Transfer Model - RRTMG param-
eterization (Iacono et al 2008) - for longwave and shortwave radiation to compute
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Sensitivity to the Wrf Model Configuration...
81
Vladimir Ivanov, Reneta Dimitrova
selected for simulations. The cold temperatures and bigger wind speeds makes the
human body cooling stronger, deteriorating the thermoregulation system, and pos-
sibly the tone and the health. For describing the cooling power of the wind in cold
weather, we use the Wind Chill index (Osczevski, Bluestein, 2005), given in tempera-
ture dimension. It is the temperature that the human individual feel in calm weather,
with heat losses from the body equal to ones for the given air temperature and wind
speed. The body reacts to different combinations of the air temperature (at 2m) and
wind speed (at 10m), which is categorized in a six-grade linguistic scale (Table 1).
(1)
The “T” is the air temperature at 2 m in C°. The “V” is wind speed at 10 m in
kmh-1. The Wind Chill index has temperature dimension, so we will call it wind
chill temperature (WCT).
ulation. Overall, the results of the model validation by the MB suggest that the
MYNN2.5_Thompson simulates temperature the best. On the other hand, the wind
speed is simulated with the lowest MB by the MYNN2.5_Lin configuration.
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Vladimir Ivanov, Reneta Dimitrova
Overall, the model validation shows that the configurations with MYNN2.5
PBL scheme and Thompson microphysics have better behaviour in comparison
to the others, concerning the two meteorological parameters. Their results are
superior at Druzhba and Hipodruma stations, while the other model configurations
give better results for the other stations. Moreover, the model configuration using
the Thompson scheme for microphysical parameterization presents better results
than Lin. The Sofia city is located in complex topography with mountain Vitosha
nearby, and most likely, these differences result from the local modifications of the
large-scale weather. Therefore, reasons could be the roughness and/or topography
characteristics surrounding the city, proximity to the mountain areas, terrain height,
and the station exposure to the solar radiation. Note that structures are not presented
explicitly in these types of models, and shadow as well as the building wake effects
can affect the temperature and wind fields significantly.
Figure 3 shows the spatial distribution of the Moderate Risk conditions counts in
the domain area. Here, the number of cases in the northeastern and the southeastern
parts are between 240 and 330. The other areas except Vitosha Mountain have between
around 120 and 240 cases with Moderate Risk conditions. There are more than 240
cases in the Vitosha Mountain, and over large area, they are above 390. The Moderate
Risk cases spatial distribution has also some distinctive characteristics. The QNSE_
Lin model configuration appears to have more Moderate Risk cases than anyone else
does. The spatial distribution of that one, QNSE_Thompson and YSU_Thompson
is more homogenous than in the other model configurations. The Vitosha Mountain,
however, is an exception with above 390 cases for all model configurations.
The plots for the High Risk cases (Figure 4) is very similar for all model con-
figurations, except the QNSE_Lin, which shows some unique spatial features in
the eastern northwestern parts of the domain, similar to the Vitosha Mountain. The
entire domain area has up to 10 cases. Only for the area of the Vitosha Mountain the
number of cases increases from 10 to about 90 at the elevated areas.
85
Vladimir Ivanov, Reneta Dimitrova
CONCLUSION
As was noted previously, the model configurations with MYNN2.5 show
better results than the other (QNSE or YSU) PBL schemes. It is very likely
due that Sofia city is located in a valley surrounded by mountains and highland
terrain and some PBL schemes do not succeed to simulate the turbulence re-
gime in the low atmospheric levels. The local turbulent kinetic energy scheme
MYNN2.5 is more suitable for stable winter conditions. Furthermore, the mod-
el configuration with Thompson microphysics gives a little better results than
Lin microphysics.
The spatial distribution of the number of Moderate Risk cases of the Wind
Chill index calculated from the WRF output for the region of Sofia in the winter
depends on the model configuration. Mainly, the type of PBL parameterization
scheme ensures that dependency. The model simulations with the MYNN2.5
PBL scheme have a more heterogeneous spatial pattern of the Wind Chill index
than the other ones for the Moderate Risk categories. The Low Risk distribution
also varies between the model simulations. There are a few High Risk cases,
which does not imply significant differences between the model configurations.
An exception from the last statement is the Vitosha Mountain, where a high
number of High Risk wind chill cases are calculated. This study can recom-
mend using MYNN2.5 PBL and Thompson microphysics for Wind Chill mod-
elling at the Sofia region. However, a more comprehensive study is needed to
strengthen these preliminary conclusions.
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Sensitivity to the Wrf Model Configuration...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program "Envi-
ronmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and Natural Disasters",
approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers № 577/17.08.2018 and sup-
ported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) of Bulgaria (Agreement №
Д01-322/18.12.2019).
We want to acknowledge the Bulgarian National Science Fund (grant DN-04/2/13.12.2016).
Special thanks to the Faculty of Physics at the University of Sofia “St. Kl. Ohridski” for
the access to the supercomputing facilities (NESTUM cluster http://hpc-lab.sofiatech.bg/
home/, funded by the ERDF Project BG161PO003-1.2.05-0001-C0001) at Sofia Tech
Park, Sofia, Bulgaria and to US NCEP for providing free-of-charge data and software.
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Hong, S., Noh Y. & Dudhia J. (2006), A new vertical diffusion package with an
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Iacono M. J., Delamere J.S., Mlawer E.J., Shephard M.W., Clough S.A. & Collins
W.D. (2008) Radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases: Calculations
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Ivanov,V., Gadzhev G., Ganev K. & Chervenkov H. (2020) Sensitivity of the Simulated
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Ivanov V., Evtimov, S. (2014a) Wind chill hazard in Bulgaria during
2003-2012 period. Comptes Rendus de L'Academie Bulgare des Sciences,
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Vladimir Ivanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9768-1049
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Reneta Dimitrova
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5931-8713
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
89
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
The air pollution nowadays forces many countries to take actions for mitigating
its adverse effects on human health. Therefore, we need a lot of information,
which is increasing in recent years. There are already more direct and indirect
data connected to the air quality from different surface-based and satellite-based
observing systems. However, we need to understand the different processes involved
in the creation, transportation, and transformation of the air pollutant species, which
help us to understand their distribution at different spatial and temporal scales.
The research community performs these tasks by air quality models systems, with
chemical transport models as the main component. We use one of these systems
with the chemical transport model CMAQ, for modeling the air quality in the
Balkan Peninsula. Previous results from air pollution modelling for the Balkan
Peninsula and Bulgaria are published in a lot of research works (Gadzhev et al.
2014, Georgieva 2014, Syrakov et al. 2015, Kaleyna, Mukhtarov, Miloshev 2013a,
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Modelling of the Sulphur and Nitrogen Depositions...
2013b, 2014). The air composition is formed by several processes, which involve
dry deposition, wet deposition, horizontal and vertical advection, horizontal and
vertical diffusion, emission, chemical transformation, aerosol processes, and
aqueous chemistry (Gadzhev, Ganev, Mukhtarov 2020, Gadzhev et al. 2011). They
interact in between and determine the air composition at different scales. There
are some studies with CMAQ of the dry and wet deposition and their influence on
the precipitation for Bulgaria (Syrakov et al. 2019a, 2019b, Georgieva et al. 2017,
2019) for different periods up to two years. Another chemical transport model –
EMEP-MSC-W is also widely used for air quality studies in Europe (Simpson et al.
2012). Our aim is to make a preliminary study of the model comparison between
long-term high-resolution simulations with the CMAQ and the EMEP-MSC-W
simulations of the Nitrogen (N) and Sulphur (S) dry and wet deposition processes
in the Balkan Peninsula for a long-term period and high spatial resolution.
METHODOLOGY
The study is based on air quality simulations with two chemical transport models
over the Balkan Peninsula from 2000 to the 2007 year. One of these simulations is
performed with the US EPA Models-3 system, which includes CMAQ (Community
Multiscale Air Quality) model (Denis et al. 1996, Byun, Ching 1999, Byun, Schere
2006), SMOKE (Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions Modelling System)
(Coats, Houyoux 1996, Houyoux, Vukovich 1999, CEP 2003) and the regional
mesoscale meteorological model MM5. The CMAQ is a numerical chemical
transport model for modelling the different processes and their contribution
involved in changing the surface and airborne gases and aerosols. That model needs
three kinds of input information – initial and boundary conditions, meteorology,
and emissions.
We use the regional mesoscale numerical model MM5 for modelling the weather
and climate conditions (Dudhia 1993, Grell, Dudhia, Stauffer) over the Balkan
Peninsula. It is a non-hydrostatic high-resolution model, providing the needed raw
meteorological output for further processing. We use the nesting capabilities of the
MM5, where the output from each outer domain excluding the last one, is used as
input for the smaller one. The first and the bigger one (D1) is the European domain
with background information, provided from the NCEP Global Analysis Data with
1º x 1º (~81 x 81km) horizontal resolution. Our research work is concentrated on
the domain D3 geographically limited to the Balkan Peninsula and some adjacent
territories. The output from the MM5 model, need to be reprocessed to the right
format for ingesting in the CMAQ. For that purpose, we use the Meteorological
– Chemistry Interface Processor – MCIP, which prepares all meteorological input
information CMAQ needs.
The emissions from the large source sources and area sources for the whole
domain excluding Bulgaria and some adjacent territories are ingested from the TNO
91
Georgi Gadzhev, Vladimir Ivanov
We focus on the dry and wet depositions modelled by the CMAQ in this study.
The N deposition contains the contribution from NO2 (Nitrogen dioxide), NO
(Nitrogen oxide), NO3 (Nitrogen trioxide), N2O5 (Dinitrogen pentoxide), HNO3
(Nitric acid), HONO (Nitrous acid), ANH4J (Accumulation-mode ammonium
mass), ANH4I (Aitken-mode ammonium mass), ANO3J (Accumulation-mode nitrate
mass), ANO3I (Aitken-mode aerosol nitrate mass) and NH3 (Ammonia):
The S deposition contains the contribution from SO2 (Sulphur dioxide), SULF
(Sulphate aerosols), ASO4J (Accumulation-mode aerosol sulphate mass), and ASO4I
(Aitken-mode aerosol sulphate mass):
The second model used for comparison with the previous one is with the
Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-West (MSC-W) of the European Monitoring
and Evaluation Programme (EMEP). It is a chemical transport model (Simpson et
al., 2012), a key tool involving in the European air pollution policy assessments.
In the beginning, the model covers the whole of Europe with a resolution of about
50 km x 50 km, with vertical levels up to the tropopause (100 hPa). The model
has changed over the years, adding different features, and currently, his horizontal
resolution ranging from 5 km to 1 degree with 20 vertical levels. In our study, we
use a grid size 0.1° x 0.1°. The EMEP-MSC-W model runs with meteorological
fields from the numerical weather prediction system ECMWF-IFS Cycle36r1.
The model output is with daily frequency, so we do not need to do further post-
processing.
For comparison of the models, we use two kind of error characteristics. The first
is Normalised Mean Bias noted as (NMB):
,
and the second is the Mean Bias (MB):
The notions in these equations are i - ith value, M - the output form CMAQ,
E - the output from EMEP-MSC-W. The results are revealed with the multiyear
averaged values of the NMB for each grid point and the annual spatial-averaged
values of the bias of the CMAQ output.
RESULTS
The results are given for the N depositions and for the S depositions, separated
in dry component, wet component, and total (dry+wet) component. The multiyear
average of the S dry, wet, and total depositions (figure 1) reveals the following
features. There is a difference between the CMAQ and the EMEP-MSC-W model
due to the difference in the emission inventories. We can clearly note the missing of
some of the S sources in one model, but not in the other. We can see from the sum
of dry and wet deposition shown on the figure, that the TPP Bobov dol, the TPP
Pernik, the Sofia city, the town of Devnia, the Bucharest city and the Istanbul city
are noticeable in the CMAQ model output, but not in the EMEP-MSC-W output.
On the other hand, Zlatna Panega and Southern Italy sources show up in the EMEP
output, but not in the CMAQ one. The influence of the input meteorological data
and the meteorological driver for the models have a considerable effect mainly on
the wet deposition modelling capability. The wet deposition in the EMEP-MSC-W
model has smaller spatial gradients, more intensive and local maximums on larger
93
Georgi Gadzhev, Vladimir Ivanov
areas around the corresponding sources. On the other hand, the wet deposition in
the CMAQ has smaller values and bigger local spatial gradients.
The influence of the meteorological conditions and the orography is more notable
for figure 1 where the normalized mean biases are shown. The normalized mean bias
of the dry deposition over the land areas reaches 50 % and more and only above some
of the sources is negative. The normalized mean bias of the sum of the dry and wet
depositions has a similar spatial structure with one of the wet depositions for the two
models but is more complex. The CMAQ and EMEP-MSC-W simulate the annual
area-averaged dry plus wet deposition in a quite similar way from 2000 to 2007, as is
shown in table 1. Although more or less different in particular years, they are close.
The bias from 2000 to 2003 is negative (figure 2), which is easy to suggest from the
area-averaged total depositions and the CMAQ bias for the whole period.
The result for the N depositions is shown in figure 3. They have different spatial
and temporal features from the S ones. As is seen in figure 3, the model difference
95
Georgi Gadzhev, Vladimir Ivanov
between the dry depositions appears in the almost homogeneous distribution for the
CMAQ, in contrast to the clearly outlined sources in the EMEP-MSC-W. The input
meteorological data and the meteorological driver for the models exert substantial
influence mostly on the wet deposition modelling. The spatial gradient of the mean
EMEP-MSC-W wet deposition is smaller than the CMAQ one. However, the CMAQ
mean wet deposition is smaller and with bigger local spatial gradients following the
orography features. The results for the normalized mean biases of the dry, wet, and
sum of the dry and wet depositions (figure 3) suggest a substantial influence of the
meteorological input and the orography on the spatial distribution of the mean wet
deposition. The normalized mean bias of the mean dry deposition reaches 50% not
only on the land however, is negative in some places. The normalized mean bias of
the sum of the dry and wet depositions has a similar, but a more complex structure
with the one of the wet deposition, because of the influence of the dry deposition.
The data in table 2 and figure 4 suggest that the simulated annual area-averaged
total nitrogen depositions by the CMAQ and EMEP-MSC-W models pretty much
the same, although the CMAQ value is smaller in 2002. The results for the multiyear
area-averaged total nitrogen depositions are very similar.
CONCLUSION
The results suggest that the Nitrogen annual area-averaged total depositions
are represented more similarly by the two models, than the Sulphur ones. There
is a large orography influence on the sum of dry and wet deposition for both
groups of chemical species. The current research suggests that the orography
97
Georgi Gadzhev, Vladimir Ivanov
and meteorology exert substantial influence on the total Nitrogen and Sulphur
depositions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Pro-
gram "Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
Bulgarian National Science Fund (grant DN-04/2/13.12.2016).
Special thanks are due to US EPA and US NCEP for providing free-of-charge data
and software and to the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific re-
search (TNO) for providing the high-resolution European anthropogenic emis-
sion inventory
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with Models-3, The Emission Inventory: Regional Strategies for the
Future, Raleigh, NC, Air and Waste Management Association.
Kaleyna P., Mukhtarov P., Miloshev N. (2014) Seasonal Variations of the
Total Column Ozone over Bulgaria in the Period 1996–2012, Comptes
rendus de l’Acad´emie bulgare des Sciences, 67, 7.
Kaleyna P., Pl. Muhtarov, N. Miloshev, (2013a) Condition of The Stratospheric
and Mesospheric Ozone Layer over Bulgaria for the Period 1996 – 2012:
Part 1 – Total Ozone Content, Seasonal Variations, Bulgarian Geophysical
Journal, 39, National Institute Of Geophysics, Geodesy And Geography,
Bulgarian Academy Of Sciences.
99
Georgi Gadzhev, Vladimir Ivanov
Georgi Gadzhev
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-3554
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Vladimir Ivanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9768-1049
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
100
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
Particulate matter (PM) are constantly studied because of their effects on the
human health and on the environment. While monitoring facilities for surface level
concentrations are growing in number and type, the information from observational
data is still limited in time and space. Chemical transport models (CTM) has been
recognized as valuable tool not only for air quality assessment, but also for policy
support in determining abatement measures (McMurry et al., 2004, Miranda et al.,
2015). The PM modelling, however, still represents a challenging task, as their
concentrations are influenced not only by different emission sources, but also by
atmospheric processes and chemical transformation mechanisms taking place
over various spatial scales. Some international initiatives for evaluation of CTMs
in the last years (e.g. AQMEII (Air Quality Modelling Evaluation International
Initiatives), FAIRMODE (Forum for AIR quality MODeling)) have allowed better
understanding of the weaknesses and strengths of the models and have contributed
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Hristina Kirova, Nadya Neykova, Emilia Georgieva
to their improvement and further development. Nowadays, CTMs are the backbone
of many comprehensive air quality forecasting systems designed for different scales
– from country, to European and global ones (e.g. Schaap et al., 2008, Sofiev et al.,
2008, Mailler et al., 2017).
At the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) a chemical
weather forecasting system has been also set up, BgCWFS (Syrakov et al. 2013,
Etropolska et al., 2011). The system was evaluated on European scale in the
framework of AQMEII (Brunner et al., 2015, Curci et al., 2015, Im et al., 2015).
On national scale, BgCWFS results with 9 km spatial resolution, showed
underestimation for PM10 (Georgieva et al., 2015). Exceedances of PM limit
values are often observed at many sites in Bulgaria (Naydenova et al., 2018, EEA
Report, 2019), and there is a public and expert interest in possibilities of operational
modelling systems to predict surface PM concentrations.
For this study we have chosen to look at freely available results of three well-
known and widely used operational air quality modelling systems for a case
study in Bulgaria. The systems differ in their input data, emissions handling,
parameterisation schemes, chemical mechanisms etc., but it is believed that they
capture the main characteristics of the surface PM distribution. In brief, results
from the following systems are used here:
EMEP MSC-W (denoted further as EMEP) – the model of the Meteorological
Synthesizing Centre-West (MSC-W) of the European Monitoring and Evaluation
Programme) (Simpson et al., 2012). The EMEP model is one of the major instru-
ments which is applied for decision and policy making not only because of its
coverage but also because its output includes photooxidants, inorganic and organic
aerosols and depositions. This is the model used by the European Environmental
Agency for annual reporting on the air quality status in Europe. The model domain
covers an extended European region with a horizontal resolution of 0.1° x 0.1° and
20 vertical layers (the lowest with a height of approximately 50 meters). Results for
the year 2017 from version rv4_33 are used.
The second system is the regional (European) ensemble air quality forecast-
ing system at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) (denoted
further as CAMS-ENS). Its main characteristics are: coverage – Europe, spatial
and temporal resolution: 0.1° and 1 h, vertical levels up to 5000 m. The Ensemble
forecast is the median of the forecasts from 9 different state-of-the-art atmospheric
modelling systems (CHIMERE, EMEP, EURAD-IM, DEHM, GEM-AQ, LOTOS-
EUROS, MATCH, MOCAGE, SILAM), ECMWF Copernicus Report, 2019. All
CTM’s use the same emissions data, the same meteorological driver and the same
boundary conditions. The regional CAMS system combines model data and in-situ
observations to provide air quality forecasts.
The third system is the global CAMS (CAMS-ECMWF). It provides opera-
tional forecast for atmospheric chemistry parameters globally with horizontal reso-
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How Well do the Air Quality Models Emep and Cams Reproduce...
METHODS
To check the performance of the models, two main aspects were considered:
a) Model to observation analysis
The modelled daily PM values are compared to the daily observed ones in each
station with available observations of PM10 (24 stations) and PM2.5 (8 stations)
August 2017. The stations are part of the air quality monitoring network managed
by the Bulgarian Executive Environment Agency (ExEA), Fig.1.
RESULTS
The comparison of model data from EMEP and CAMS-ENS to observed PM10
concentrations is visualized in Fig.2 for the selected three stations. The graphs pre-
senting the kernel density estimations show that PM10 concentrations estimated by
both models have similar distributions. The box plots indicate that both models
have smaller means and dispersions than the observed data, but CAMS-ENS model
has smaller dispersion than the EMEP model. For the rural remote station Rozhen
the models have better resemblance to the observed data than for the urban stations,
as expected because this station is not influenced by local emissions typical for the
cities.
Both models underestimate the observed PM10 concentrations. This can also
be seen from the statistical indicators of modelled versus observed PM10 averaged
over all 24 stations presented in Table 1 and on the scatter plots for all 24 stations
presented in Fig. 3. The statistical indicators show very similar results for the two
models with underestimation on average by about 50%. The scatter plot indicates
that the EMEP model has more often overestimation of some daily values than
CAMS-ENS. Overall we can conclude that EMEP model underestimates the
observed PM10 concentrations to a lesser extent than CAMS-ENS model, but the
correlation is better for CAMS-ENS.
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How Well do the Air Quality Models Emep and Cams Reproduce...
A B C
A B
Figure 3. Scatter plots for daily PM10 at 24 stations in Bulgaria in August 2017:
a) EMEP and b) CAMS-ENS
on average by about 32%, is less than the underestimation for PM10. To note that the
number of stations for PM2.5 is only 8.
A B C
Figure 4. Observed vs modelled PM2.5 in August 2017: a) Sofia –
Hipodruma, b) Varna, c) Rozhen: Box plots on 1st row
and corresponding kernel density estimations on 2nd row
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How Well do the Air Quality Models Emep and Cams Reproduce...
A B
Figure 5. Scatter plots for daily PM2.5 at 8 stations in Bulgaria in August 2017:
a) EMEP and b) CAMS- ENS
Figure 6. Monthly mean PM10 (first row) and PM2.5 (second row)
concentrations (µgm-3) for domain Bulgaria (August 2017): EMEP (left),
CAMS-ENS (middle) and CAMS-ECMWF (right)
CONCLUSIONS
In this study EMEP and CAMS-ENS simulated concentrations for PM10 and
PM2.5 were compared to data from regular air quality stations in Bulgaria for a
test period of one month (August 2017). Both models underestimate the observed
concentrations, on monthly basis by about 50 % for PM10 and by about 32 % for
PM2.5. The models perform better at the rural remote (mountain) site Rozhen than
for the urban background stations indicating that the outputs could be used for
indicative values of background PMs concentrations. EMEP model underestimated
the observed PM10 and PM2.5 values to a lesser extent than CAMS-ENS. The spatial
distribution showed higher values in the eastern part of domain Bulgaria and hot
spots over main cities. Interestingly, the CAMS-ECMWF model, that has coarser
grid resolution, indicates higher surface concentrations north of the country over
the Lower Danube plain. This might be due to sources not accounted for in the
other models, e.g. fires or mineral dust. As this system assimilates satellite data,
it could forecast influence of such events on surface PM concentrations. Further
analysis are ongoing in this direction.
Future plans foresee to perform similar analysis for a winter month when surface
concentrations of PM are higher due to higher anthropogenic emissions (traffic,
domestic heating, and energy production from thermal power plants) and when
the conditions for dispersion of atmospheric pollutants are worse due to thermal
inversions. Results by BgCWFS will be also included in the analysis.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work presented here was carried out in the frame of the project SIDIAQ“
Satellite Information Downscaled to Urban Air Quality in Bulgaria”, funded
by the Government of Bulgaria through the ESA Contract No.4000124150/18/
NL/SC under the PECS (Plan for Еurореаn Cooperating States). Тhе view
expressed herein саn in nо way bе taken to reflect the official opinion of the
Еurореаn Space Agency.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the Copernicus
Atmosphere Monitoring Service and the Meteorological Synthesizing Centre-
West of the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme and Met Norway
are acknowledged for providing analyzed and forecasted data on meteorological
parameters and atmospheric chemistry. Someanalyses and visualizations used in
this study were produced with the Giovanni online data system, developed and
maintained by the NASA GES DISC.
REFERENCES
Brunner, D., Savage, N., Jorba, O., Eder, B., Giordano, L., Badia, A.,
Balzarini, A., Baró, R., Bianconi, R., Chemel, C., Curci, G., Forkel, R.,
Jiménez-Guerrero, P., Hirtl, M., Hodzic, A., Honzak, L., Im, U., Knote,
109
Hristina Kirova, Nadya Neykova, Emilia Georgieva
C., Makar, P., Manders-Groot, A., van Meijgaard, E., Neal, L., Pérez, J.
L., Pirovano, G., San Jose, R., Schröder, W., Sokhi, R. S., Syrakov, D.,
Torian, A., Tuccella, A., Werhahn, J., Wolke, R., Yahya, K., Zabkar, R.,
Zhang, Y., Hogrefe, C. andGalmarini, S.. (2015) Comparative analysis
of meteorological performance of coupled chemistry-meteorology
models in the context of AQMEII phase 2,Atmospheric Environment,
115, 470-498.
EEA (2019) Air Quality in Europe – 2019 Report, EEA Report 10/2019,
ISSN 1977-8449, doi:10.2800/822355.
ECMWF Copernicus Report (2019) CAMS Regional Air Quality User
Guide, issued Meteo-France, https://www.regional.atmosphere.
copernicus.eu/doc/USER_GUIDE_dataServer.pdf
Etropolska, I., Prodanova, M., Syrakov, D., Ganev, K., Miloshev, N. and
Slavov, K. (2011) Bulgarian Operative System for Chemical Weather
Forecast. In: Dimov, I., Dimova, S., Kolkovska, N. (eds) Numerical
Methods and Applications. NMA 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, vol 6046. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 141-149.
Georgieva, E., Syrakov, D., Prodanova, M., Etropolska, I. and Slavov, K.,
(2015) Evaluating the performance of WRF-CMAQ air quality model-
ling system in Bulgaria by means of the DELTA tool, International Jour-
nal of Environment and Pollution, Vol. 57, No. 3/4, 272-284.
Curci, G., Hogrefe, C., Bianconi, R., Im, U., Balzarini, A., Baró, R.,
Brunner, D., Forkel, R., Giordano, L., Hirtl, M., Honzak, L., Jiménez
Guerrero, P., Knote, C., Langer, M., Makar, P., Pirovano, G., Perez, J. L.,
San José, R., Syrakov, D., Tuccella, P., Werhahn, J., Wolke, R., Žabkar,
R. and Zhang, Y. (2015) Uncertainties of simulated aerosol optical
properties induced by assumptions on aerosol physical and chemical
properties: an AQMEII-2 perspective,Atmospheric Environment, 115,
Elsevier, 541-552.
MaillerS., Menut, L., Khvorostyanov, D.,Valari, M., Couvidat, F., Siour,
G., Turquety, S., Briant, R., Tuccella, P., Bessagnet, B., Colette, A.,
Letinois, L., and F. Meleux, F., (2017) CHIMERE-2017: from urban
to hemispheric chemistry-transport modelingGeosci. Model Dev., 10,
2397-2423, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2397-2017.
McMurry, P., Shepherd, M.F and Vickery J.S. (2004) Particulate Matter
Science for Policy Makers: A NARISTO Assessment, Cambridge
University Press.
Miranda, A., Silveira, C., Ferreira,J., Monteiro, A., Lopes, D., Relvas, H.,
Borrego, C.and Roebeling, P. (2015) Current air quality plans in Europe
designed to support air quality management policies, Atmospheric
Pollution Research 6, 434-443.
110
How Well do the Air Quality Models Emep and Cams Reproduce...
Hristina Kirova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1764-2443
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Nadya Neykova
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1892-2081
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Emilia Georgieva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8466-4976
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
111
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract. The purpose of the work is to present and discuss newly obtained
data for the chemical composition of cloud water (CW) and rain water (RW) at a
high-elevation site in Bulgaria. Sampling of CW and RW was organized in 2017
and 2018 during field experiments at Cherni Vrah, the highest peak in Vitosha
Mountain. Passive collectors designed and constructed at NIMN were used. All
collected samples (118) were analyzed for acidity (pH), conductivity (EC), main
anions - SO42-, NO3-, Cl-, ammonium ions (NH4+), macro and micro elements (Na,
K, Mg, Ca, Fe, Si, Zn, Cu). The average pH values for both types of samples were
in the acidity range (<5.0). The values of EC varied from 5 to 89.2 µS.cm-1 for RW
and from 0.7 to 202 µS.cm-1 for CW. The ion composition was dominated by NH4+,
Ca, nssSO42- and NO3-, which made up more than 63% of the total ionic content for
RW and 75% for CW. The relative contribution of the major compounds to the CW
and RW composition is presented and discussed. The effect of long-range transport
processes is studied for some selected periods of 2018 using HYSPLIT air mass
backward trajectory analysis.
Keywords: Cloud water; rain water; chemical composition; acidity; backward
trajectories
INTRODUCTION
The atmosphere is an important environment in which different gaseous and
aerosol species are transported. Cloud water (CW) and rain water (RW) play
important roles in removing particles and dissolved gaseous pollutants from the
atmosphere. They also scavenge sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx),
and other atmospheric pollutants, which can affect their acidity and chemical
composition and cause ecological damage to ecosystems (Seinfeld and Pandis,
2006, Gioda et al., 2013). The chemical composition of CW and RW depends on
pollutants emitted by sources of anthropogenic and natural origin, the dynamical
processes in the atmosphere and the chemical reactions that occur during both local
and long-range transport. Nitrates (NO3-), sulphates (SO42-) and other ions such
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Cloud and Rain Water Chemical Composition at Peak...
METHODS
Site description
Vitosha Mountain is the first national park in Bulgaria and in the Balkan
Peninsula. It is located on the outskirts of Sofia, with an area of 270.79 km2. Cherni
vrah is the highest peak where the Meteorological station of NIMH is situated
(42.6167 N, 23.2667 E, 2286 m asl), Fig.1. The CW and RW samples were collected
at this meteorological station from June 2017 to November 2018.
The cloud water is sampled by using a passive collector designed and constructed
in NIMH (Fig.2a). All construction is made from plexiglas and sampling elements
are made from fishing lines with length in total 180 m: 100m - ø1mm 80 m –
ø0.5mm. The cloud droplets impact on the vertical strings, combine to larger drops,
run down the strings, and drip into a 500 ml polyethylene (PE) bottle. The CW
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Elena Hristova, Blagorodka Veleva, Krum Velchev, Emilia Georgieva
a) b)
Figure 2. Samplers for (a) cloud water and (b) rain water
Manual (bulk) rain water sampler is used for sampling of rainwater samples
(Fig.2b). The material of the collector is polyethylene terephthalate funnel of 20
cm in diameter and bottle with 5l capacity. The bulk sampler is washed every day
with deionized water (<1µS.cm-1) to avoid dry deposition. The RW samples were
taken on daily basis.
for SO42-, NO3-, Cl-, ICP OES (Vista MPX CCD Simultaneous, VARIAN) for Ca,
Mg, K, Na, Fe, Si, Zn, Cu and Spectrophotometer S-20 for NH4+.
The detection limits for all analysed elements are presented in Table 1. The
concentration of nss_SO42- has been estimated by correction based on assumption
that sodium is a sea salt tracer: [nss_SO42-] = [SO42-]-(0.25× [Na]), according to
WMO GAW, 2004.
a) b)
Figure 3. Frequency of pH (a) and EC (b) for cloud and rain water samples
al., 2013). The average EC values for CW and RW are 56 μS cm-1 and 23 μS cm-1,
respectively.
The CW and RW pH parameter is the result of acid-base reactions in the cloud
droplets. Sulphates and nitrates are the main ions that increase the concentration
of H + ion in rainwater, while NH4+, Ca (usually in the form of CaCO3), Mg, K are
the main neutralizing ions. The total ionic content (TIC) of cloud and rain water
samples is ranged from 1.1 to 68 mg l−1 and from 4 to 90 mg l−1, respectively. The
median of TIC in CW samples is 16.5 mg l−1 and for RW samples is 6.2 mg l−1. As
shown by the frequency distribution of TIC in Fig. 4, a fraction of cloud and rain
samples have concentrations between 1 and 20 mg l−1 (89% of the RW and 62% of
the CW). Тhe percentage of samples in the concentration range 20 – 40 mg l−1 is
higher for the CW than for the RW (25% and 6%, respectively). Only 2.6% of the
CW samples have TIC in the range 80-100 mg l−1.
The variation in the concentrations of all studied elements is seen on the Box
Plot presented in Fig.5. The ion composition of RW and CW was dominated by
NH4+, Ca, nss_SO42- and NO3-, which made up more than 63% and 75% of the total
ionic content. As expected, concentrations of analyzed elements are higher in cloud
water than in rain water samples.
a) b)
Figure 5. Concentrations of the studied elements
in (a) cloud water and (b) rain water samples
The concentrations of the main acidifying ions - SO42- for the study period ranged
from 0.6 to 39mg.l-1 for CW and from 0.3 to 20.3mg.l-1 for RW. Concentrations of
NO3- vary from 0.15 to 23.1mg.l-1 for CW and from 0.18 to 15.8mg.l-1 for RW.
NH4+ ion concentrations for CW and RW samples are ranged from 0.01mg.l-1 to
8.3mg.l-1 and from 0.03mg.l-1 to 3.9mg.l-1. The lowest variations in concentrations
were observed for Fe, Cu and Zn. Their concentration is ranged from 0.005 to
1.8mg.l-1. High variation in Cl and Na concentrations are observed in RW samples.
The obtained Cl concentration ranged from 0.05mg.l-1 to 27mg.l-1 and for Na from
01 mg.l-1 to 15.6mg.l-1.
snow in many parts of Eastern Europe. At ChV the arriving air masses were from
South (S)-Southwest (SW) (Fig. 6) on 19.03 (rain water sample) and from West (W)
on 20.03 (cloud water sample) (Fig. 6). From all analysed samples collected in 2018,
the largest concentrations of Cl and Na were obtained in the rain water samples on 19
March. The TIC of the rain sample is 64.1mg.l-1 with 42% contribution of Cl, 24%
of Na, 3% ss_SO42- (sea salt SO42-) and only 6% of the sulphates from anthropogenic
source (nss_SO42-) (Fig.6). A very large difference in the SO42- concentrations be-
tween RW and CW is observed. The TIC of the cloud water sample on 20 March
2018 is 3.9 mg.l-1 containing 28% nss_SO42-, following by 28.3% Ca, 15.9% Cl and
11.1% K. These results indicated aged air masses with sea salt aerosols (Cl and Na)
and mineral dust (Ca and Si) associated with Saharan origin.
Тhe synoptic situation for the second period, 30 June – 4 July 2018, is character-
ized by the influence of the slowly moving Mediterranean cyclone “Nefeli” cross-
ing the country from south to northeast.
The atmospheric conditions in the first part of the period were highly unstable
with heavy rains and thunderstorms in many places in Bulgaria, while the end of
the period was marked by increased surface pressure and occasional convective
precipitations (Monthly bulletin, 06 & 07, 2018). The TIC in rain sample collected
on 30 June (48.5 mg.l-1) is higher than this for cloud water sample collected on 3
July (36.7 mg.l-1). The trajectory analysis shows that on 30 of June the transport
of air masses to the ChV is from North while they are from W, NW on 3 of July
(Fig.7). Generally, nss_SO42- was found to be the dominant ion in both samples: RW
(36%) and CW (43%). The contribution of NO3- and NH4+ ions in the CW sample
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Cloud and Rain Water Chemical Composition at Peak...
(23% and 12%) are higher than in the RW sample (16% and 5%). The contribution
of Ca is three times higher in the RW sample than observed in the CW sample. For
this selected period the TIC is consisted mainly of nss_SO42-, NO3- NH4+ and Ca
(RW-83% and CW-88%).
CONCLUSIONS
New results for the chemical composition of cloud water (CW) and rain wa-
ter (RW) at The high-elevation site Cherni Vruh were presented. The results were
based on 40 cloud and 78 rainwater samples collected and analysed in the pe-
riod June 2017 – November 2018. The comparison of the cloud and rain water
presents systematic differences concerning the pH, the electric conductivity, and
119
Elena Hristova, Blagorodka Veleva, Krum Velchev, Emilia Georgieva
concentrations of most elements. The frequency analysis showed that 100 % of the
cloud and 98% of the rain samples have pH value in the acidity range (<5.0).
Mean concentrations were generally higher in cloud water than in rainwater
samples. The ion composition of RW and CW was dominated by NH4+, Ca, nss_
SO42- and NO3- accounting for more than 63% and 75% of the total ionic content.
The obtained concentrations of nss_SO42- in the cloud water samples are two times
higher than those reported for various mountain sites by Marinoni et al., 2004,
Schwab et al., 2016 and Gioda et al., 2013. The mean concentrations of NO3- and
NH4+ in the CW samples are lower than ones derived in Marinoni et al., 2004 and
Gioda et al., 2013. The study of the origin of the air masses contributed to better
understanding of variations in the chemical composition and concentration levels
in two specific cases in 2018.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was performed with the financial support from the Bulgarian National
Science Fund trough contract N. DN-04/4-15.12.2016. We acknowledge also to
the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT
model and READY website (http://www.ready.noaa.gov).
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Stein, A.F., Draxler, R.R, Rolph, G.D., Stunder, B.J.B., Cohen, M.D.,
and Ngan, F. (2015). NOAA's HYSPLIT atmospheric transport and
dispersion modeling system, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 96, 2059 – 2077.
121
Elena Hristova, Blagorodka Veleva, Krum Velchev, Emilia Georgieva
Elena Hristova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5681-4375
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Blagorodka Veleva
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2848-5559
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Krum Velchev
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Emilia Georgieva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8466-4976
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
122
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract:
The present work aims at characterising ultrafine particulate matter (PM) that
was emitted during biomass gasification in a drop tube furnace (DTF). Three
different types of agricultural residue were gasified using the following gasifying
agents: O2/N2 and O2/N2/CO2. The PM in the flue gases were sampled, using 13 stage
impactor. Particulates, having aerodynamic diameter of 1 and 0.65 µm (PM1 and
PM0.65) had the highest mass fraction among all other particulates with aerodynamic
diameter up to 10 µm. Thus, the effects of biomass and gasifying agent on particles’
mass distribution were studied. Besides, PM1 and PM0.65 were characterised using
X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis. The PM elemental composition confirmed that
volatile ash compounds, such as K and Cl are typical constituents of the ultrafine
particulates, when biomass from agricultural residue (colza and sunflower husks)
was gasified.
Keywords: particulate matter, biomass, gasification.
INTRODUCTION
Currently in Bulgaria, the air quality investigations are mostly focused on
the atmospheric air pollution. Certain attention is drawn on the particulate mat-
ter (precisely PM10 and PM2.5), namely the exceedance of their norms (Directive
2008/50/EC), PM chemical composition and source apportionment. Chuturkova
(Chuturkova, 2015) assessed particulate matter (РМ10 and РМ2.5) in atmospheric
air for the period 2007-2014. Two regions were examined (urbanized and indus-
trial) involving three monitoring stations: city background, transport-oriented,
and industrial-oriented. The author reports the average annual PM10 and PM2.5
concentrations, the average monthly PM10 concentrations, the maximum PM10
concentrations (μg/m3) and the number of exceedings in the investigated pe-
123
I. Naydenova, Ts. Petrova, O. Sandov, R. Ferreira, R. Velichkova, M. Costa
riod. Vlaknenski et al. (Vlaknenski, 2015) traced the background air pollution
with PM10 in three medium-sized urban areas of Central North Bulgaria during
2007-2010. Veleva et al. (Veleva, 2014a and Veleva, 2014b) measured the daily
concentration of PM10 in a period of four seasons in Bulgaria, as well as the
chemical composition of the collected samples through EDXRF analysis. The
authors identify more than 23 chemical elements in the structure of the collected
PM10. Veleva et al. (Veleva, 2015) organized six experimental campaigns in Sofia
within the winter and the summer periods of 2012, 2013 and 2014. The authors
report the PM10 mass concentration and the elemental composition of more than
20 elements (P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn Br, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Cd,
Sn, Sb, I, Ba, Pb), which show significant variations in maximum and mean con-
centrations.
Antova et al. (Antova, 2019) collected and identified the main air pollutants in
indoor air. The authors studied the concentration of PM10 and PM2.5, ozone, carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic com-
pounds, moisture and mold presence in school classrooms.
The pronounced interest on PM10 and PM2.5 concentration in the urban atmo-
sphere is challenged by the European and the national regulations, straggling to
find efficient solution for various insufficiently controlled processes, such as com-
bustion in terms of residential heating and transport (IIR, 2019, Nikolaev, 2017
and Naydenova, 2018). Gvero et al. (Gvero, 2018) measure the daily average PM10
concentrations (μg m–3) in one part of Banja Luka city area, with dominant private
households, and determine the PM chemical composition. Juda-Rezler et al. (Juda-
Rezler, 2020) studied the PM2.5 for one calendar year and gave the seasonal concen-
tration of PM2.5, 19 trace elements in PM2.5, as well as PM2.5 sources apportionment
– residential combustion, exhaust traffic emissions, non-exhaust traffic emissions.
Zalakeviciute et al. (Zalakeviciutea, 2020) identified 28 different elements in the
structure of PM10, as well as the existence of ions, such as SO42-, NO3- and NH4+.
Pateraki et al. (Pateraki, 2020) chemically characterized PM2.5 and PM1, sampled
from Greater Athens Area. The authors identified 20 different PM-bound polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Chernishev et al. (Chernishev, 2018) investigated
the particle size distribution and the chemical composition, e.g. the fraction of par-
ticles with structured carbon (crystalline phase state) in the sampled PM10, which
originated from the exhausts of two-wheeled vehicles that are typically used in the
territory of Vladivostok, Russia.
Recently, the variety of processes for solid biofuels utilization gained signifi-
cant attention due to the increase of energy demands and shortage of fossil fuels,
the main source of energy in the planet (Villetta, 2017). However, the flue gases of
such processes are typical source of pollutants, including char and PM of different
size and chemical composition. The ultrafine PM contain significant amount of soot
particles known to be harmful to the environment and the human beings. They can
124
Characteristics of Ultrafine PM Emitted...
penetrate easily into the respiratory system, causing lung malfunction and prema-
ture death (Göktepe, 2016 and Naydenova, 2007).
Thus, detailed research is needed about the emission modes and factors of ultra-
fine PM, as well as on their chemical composition and behavior.
Gasification is one of the possible utilization ways to convert solid biofuels into
valuable products. Generally, biomass gasification is a thermo-chemical conversion
in a low oxygen environment (using different gasifying agents - usually air, oxy-
gen or steam), producing syngas. It is a mixture mainly made of carbon monoxide
(CO), hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4) and other hydrocarbons. These substances are
flammable and combustible (Villetta, 2017). According to Basu and Duarte (Basu,
2010 and Duarte, 2018) the gasification converts solid or liquid carbonaceous fuels
into a synthesis gas or syngas that can be used to produce chemical feedstock, liq-
uid fuels, power or gaseous fuels.
The present work was focused on the ultrafine PM emitted during biomass
gasification, which was carried out in a drop tube furnace (DTF). Three different
types of biomass were utilized with two types of gasifying agents: O2/N2 and O2/N2/
CO2. The effects of biomass and gasifying agent on the particles’ mass concentration
were investigated, along with the chemical characterisation of the PM1 and PM0.65,
using XRF analysis. The work is still in progress and herein only some preliminary
results are presented.
METHODS USED
In the present experiment, PM with different sizes was collected during biomass
gasification in DTF, which is a laboratory-scale reactor, suitable for pulverised-fuel
conversion. Detailed description of the applied experimental set up is provided by
Duarte and Duarte et al. (Duarte, 2018 and Duarte, 2019) and Adánez-Rubio et.al
(Adánez-Rubio, 2020). Duarte et al. (Duarte, 2019) conduct gasification experi-
ments of wheat straw. The authors examine the influence of the operating tempera-
ture of the DTF between 900 and 1200 ºC on the formation of syngas and soot.
The authors obtained that higher operating temperatures result in higher CO and
H2 yields, higher H2/CO volume ratio, which leads to a higher carbon conversion
efficiency but lower yields of CH4 and CO2. The formation of soot increases with
temperature increase and reaches a maximum at 1000ºC, above which it starts to
decrease. Adánez-Rubio et.al (Adánez-Rubio, 2020) investigate the pig manure
gasification at different temperatures (900-1200 ºC) and different gasifying agents
(N2/O2, N2/O2/CO2, N2/O2/H2O). The results show that the temperature increase
leads to a higher production of soot particles, and the use of water decreases the
soot production.
The present work was focused on the chemical characterization of ultrafine PM
that was sampled from the flue gases during biomass gasification. The experiment
was carried out at 1000ºC, expecting to have high soot yield, which would highly
125
I. Naydenova, Ts. Petrova, O. Sandov, R. Ferreira, R. Velichkova, M. Costa
affect the yield of ultrafine particulates. The selected types of biomass are woody
biomass (softwood and bark) and agriculture residue (colza and sunflower husks).
The present study was focused on the Bulgarian alternative biofuels that are easily
accessible in large amount annually as a result of food and energy industries. For
instance, sunflower husks and softwood are typically used for solid biofuels produc-
tion. Recent technologies allow co-combustion of biomass with coal in pulverised
coal boilers. On the other hand, the softwood is widely used for residential heating
purposes (as solid biofuel pellets or it is directly burnt in stoves at some regions in
Bulgaria).
Prior to the experiment, the biomass was characterized through proximate, ulti-
mate and ash analyses. The results are presented elsewhere (Naydenova, 2020). The
biomass was initially ground and sieved to assure fuel particle size below 1mm.
The biomass flow was kept at 15 g/h throughout all experiments, and the
excess air ratio (𝜆) was constant, at a value of 0.4. Two different gasifying
agents were used in the following proportions: (1) a mixture of 1% of O2 and
99% of N2 and (2) a mixture of 1% O2, 94% of N2 and 5% of CO2. The nitrogen
was used as a carrier gas. The chosen operating conditions were based on the
works of Duarte, Duarte et al. and Adánez-Rubio et.al. (Duarte, 2018, Duarte,
2019 and Adánez-Rubio, 2020), as well as on the requirements of Dekati PM
sampling system (Dekati, 2013).
During biomass gasification, the PM samples were collected with 13 stage im-
pactor, which assures D50% values (μm) for 13 cutdiameters (cut-off sizes), be-
tween 10 μm and 30 nm, (Dekati, 2010). The present work aims at characterizing
only the ultrafine particulates, namely the PM with D50% = 0.65 μm (PM0.65) and
D50% = 1 μm (PM1). For simplicity, further in the text, the above described particu-
lates are entitled as PM0.65 and PM1.
The PM elemental composition was obtained using XRF analysis, which was
carried out with Fischerscope X-Ray System XDАL. This method for qualitative
analysis was chosen as a primary step of PM characterization, because it is non-
destructive and allows identifying relatively wide range of chemical elements with
atomic numbers from 19 (potassium) to 92 (uranium) in the ppm range.
When O2/N2 was used as gasifying agent: 71.63% for sunflower husks, 50.63%
for softwood and 35.55% for colza;
When O2/N2/CO2 was used as gasifying agent: 46.18% for sunflower husks,
43.72% for softwood and 68.46% for colza.
Furthermore, the particle mass distribution PM1 and PM0.65 were investigated.
Thus, the effect of the biomass type and the gasifying agent on the PM mass and
wt. % distribution is presented in Table 1 and Fig. 1. In the case of O2/N2 - the
following relations were observed for the mass concentration of PM0.65 and PM1
(Fig. 1):
- Colza: the mass concentration of PM0.65 was about 4 times higher than the one,
measured for PM1;
- Softwood: PM0.65 was 29 % higher than PM1;
- Sunflower husks: PM0.65 and PM1 were with almost equal masses.
In the case of O2/N2/CO2 - the following relations were obtained (Fig. 1):
- Colza: PM0.65 was about 17% higher than PM1;
- Softwood: PM0.65 was twice timed less than PM1;
- Sunflower husks: PM0.65 was about 4 times less than PM1.
Besides, the gasification of colza resulted in an almost equal mass of PM0.65
among all other PM, sampled in the 13-stage cascade, for both gasifying agents.
On the other hand, a significant difference in PM1 mass concentration was ob-
served: 6.82 % in O2/N2 and 37.04 % in O2/N2/CO2 atmosphere. When softwood
was gasified, the fraction of PM0.65 among all other PM was 29.63 % in O2/N2
and 14.24 % in O2/N2/CO2, whereas the PM1 was 21.00 % in O2/N2 and 29.48%
in O2/N2/CO2 atmosphere. In the case of sunflower husks, the mass concentration
of PM0.65 was 37.19 % in O2/N2 and 9.44 % in O2/N2/CO2 atmosphere, whereas in
O2/N2/CO2 atmosphere the PM1 showed higher concentration for all investigated
biomass types.
127
I. Naydenova, Ts. Petrova, O. Sandov, R. Ferreira, R. Velichkova, M. Costa
Figure 1. The percentage of PM0.65 and PM1 relative to the total amount
of particulate matter
Fig. 2 shows a comparison of the emitted PM0.65 and PM1 depending on the bio-
mass used. When O2/N2 was the gasifying atmosphere, the lowest mass of PM0.65
and PM1 was detected in the colza gasification, whereas the highest mass - for the
sunflower husks. Slight variations were observed for the PM0.65 mass during bio-
mass gasification in O2/N2/CO2 atmosphere: softwood (0.00355 g), sunflower husks
(0.0034 g) and colza (0.00673 g). Distinctly higher mass of PM1 was obtained,
when sunflower husks (0.01324 g) were processed.
128
Characteristics of Ultrafine PM Emitted...
such as K and Cl. These results correspond with the results from the ultimate and
the ash analyses of the same feedstock (Naydenova. 2020) and with the observa-
tions of Obernberger et al. (Obernberger, 2006). The authors concluded that the ash,
containing elements like K, Na, P and Cl is typically part of the fly ash, whereas
elements like Ca, Mg and Si are normally found in the bottom ash. The PM0.65-1
from woody biomass (softwood) contained greater variety of heavy metals and Sr
was obtained independently of the gasifying agent.
The combined effects of biomass and gasifying agent on the PM chemical com-
position can be summarized as follows: (a) colza - Fe and K were found in all
filters, independently of the gasifying agent. However, Cl was detected only in the
PM0.65 (O2/N2/CO2), whereas the elements: Cu, Mn and Zn were obtained in the
rest of the filters; (b) softwood – Fe, Mn and Sr were the dominant elements in both
PM0.65 and PM1, accompanied by unequally distributed Zn, Zr, Cd, Cu, Sb and As in
some of the filters; (c) sunflower husks - Fe and Zn were detectable in all samples,
while Ca, Mn and K – only in some of the filters. According to Argyropoulos et al.
(Argyropoulos, 2012), the biomass burning is a typical source of K, Ca, Mn and Sr.
CONCLUSIONS
The main goal of the present study was to characterise the ultrafine particulates
(PM1 and PM0.65), obtained from the flue gases during biomass gasification in
DTF. The PM elemental composition was experimentally measured applying XRF
technique. Thus, the effect of biomass and gasifying agent on the particulates’ mass
distribution and elemental composition was investigated.
When biomass was processed in O2/N2, the relative mass concentration of the
PM collected on both filters, PM0.65 and PM1, over the total mass of all other sized
PM increased in the following order: 35.55 % (colza), 50.63 % (softwood), 71.63 %
(sunflower husks). Nevertheless, when O2/N2/CO2 was the gasifying agent: 43.72 %
(softwood), 46.18 % (sunflower husks), 68.46 % (colza).
The elemental composition of the ultrafine particulates sampled during gasifi-
cation of agricultural residue (colza and sunflower husks) confirmed the existence
of volatile ash compounds, such as K and Cl, which were missing in the PM1-0.65,
sampled during gasification of woody biomass. This result corresponds well with
preliminary published observations (Obernberger, 2006) that elements, such as K
and Cl, play a significant role in the process of ultrafine particulates formation
through the nucleation mechanism.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The PM analysis was funded through the Internal Competition of Technical
University of Sofia - 2020 for the scientific project “Perspective leaders”, Contract
№ 201ПР0017-10/26.05.2020. The authors would also like to acknowledge the
financial support from the National Science Program “Environmental Protection
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Characteristics of Ultrafine PM Emitted...
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Characteristics of Ultrafine PM Emitted...
Iliyana Naydenova
College of Energy and Electronics
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Tsvetelina Petrova
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8482-4792
College of Energy and Electronics
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ognyan Sandov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7697-669X
College of Energy and Electronics
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ricardo Ferreira
Mechanical Engineering Department
Instituto Superior Técnico
Universidade de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
E-mail: [email protected]
Rositsa Velichkova
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3757-8685
Faculty of Power Engineering and Power Machines
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Mario Costa
Mechanical Engineering Department
Instituto Superior Técnico
Universidade de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
133
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: Black Sea freezing is observed regularly in the northern part and near
the Kerch Strait. The reason is the relatively shallow northwestern shelf part and
the river inflow of the three major European rivers Danube, Dniepr and Dniestr,
carrying large amount of fresh water to this part of the Black Sea. The observed
global warming in the latest decades makes these episodes less intense. In 2012
and 2017 the sea ice extended unusually south. The aim of this study is to fill the
gap of recent analysis on the Northern Black Sea areas covered regularly with ice.
Based on the coastal meteorological stations measurements, we investigate the
interannual-to-decadal variability of the thermal regime.The relation with the sea-
ice cover based on satellite observations is studied. We define various categories of
winter conditions depending on the number of cold days.
Keywords: climate change, Black Sea, winter severity
INTRODUCTION
The Black Sea is a large deep water basin on the border between European and
Asian continents lying in the continental mid-latitude climate zone. It is an impor-
tant climatic factor for all borderline countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Rus-
sia, Georgia and Turkey). The open plane in north direction enables the propagation
of the Siberian High influence in winter and thus severe winter conditions could oc-
cur. From the other side, the Mediterranean Sea influence is significant through the
Mediterranean cyclones passing frequently the area, which leads to mild weather
conditions.
Black Sea freezing is observed regularly in the northern part and near the Kerch
Straits and occasionally spread during cold winters to south reaching Romanian
coast (Simonov and Altman, 1991). Since 1972 moderate freezing was observed,
but February 2012 was extremely cold and the Black sea ice covered area reached
Constanta in Romania (Figure 1). 2017 was also anomalously cold in this area.
There is not a thorough recent study of the areas covered regularly with ice in
the Northern Black Sea, and our aim is to fill this gap and to check to what extent
the sea ice occurrence is important to be taken into account from numerical models.
134
Black Sea Freezing and Winter Severity: Relation...
1) Historical archives and literature material on the Black Sea ice extend and
temperature from the Black Sea book (Simonov and Altman, 1991)
2) Data for 2m air temperature coming from 9 coastal meteorological stations
along the Black Sea coast - Burgas, Varna, Odessa, Herson, Mariupol, Batumi,
Trabzon, Sinop and Istanbul (Figure 2). The sea temperature in Burgas and Varna
is also used. The data source is the regular SYNOP telegrams distributed by the
Global Surface Summary of the Day – GSOD (data.nodc.noaa.gov). The data are
decoded from SYNOP code and cover the period since 1980 till present.
135
Mirna Matov, Elisaveta Peneva, Greta Georgieva
3) Data for the ice extent are taken from the US National Snow and Ice Data
Center product Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent - Northern Hemisphere
(MASIE-NH). This provides daily sea ice data from January 1st, 2006 to the present
(MASIE, Technical References).
We have used data from the NOAA data set Global Surface Summary of the
Day – GSOD (data.nodc.noaa.gov). The mean winter temperature is calculated for
the 9 meteorological stations along the Black Sea coast – Burgas and Varna in
Bulgaria, Odessa, Herson and Mariupol in Ukraine, Batumi in Georgia and Istanbul,
Trabzon and Sinop in Turkey, as the mean value for the months January, February
and march). The graphs are presented in Figure 3 and show significant interannual
variability. As expected the north-coast stations (Odesa, Herson and Mariupol) are
much colder than the south ones (Istanbul, Sinop and Trabzon), and the one eastern
(Batumi) is similar to the south ones. Burgas and Varna winter temperature on the
west coast is in between. Overall, the variations in the 9 stations are very similar
and in phase, suggesting that the winter conditions are uniform in the entire area.
Interesting fact to notice also is the slight tendency for milder winter.
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Black Sea Freezing and Winter Severity: Relation...
In order to categorize how cold was the winter, we have followed Simonov and
Altman (1991) approach: we define a Winter Severity Index (WSI) as the sum of
negative daily temperature values (frozen days) with opposite sign for the months
December to March for each of the 9 stations. Figure 4 show that in Odesa, Mariupol
and Herson every winter the temperature falls regularly below zero, on the contrary
- in Istanbul, Sinop and Trabzon very rare. Burgas and Varna on the west coast are
similar to the north but Batumi on the east is like the southern stations. The most
indicative for the winter intensity are the north cities and thus in the further analysis
we have considered these three locations.
Figure 4. Winter severity index for Burgas, Varna, Bartumi, Odesa, Herson, Mari-
upol, Trabzon, Sinop and Istanbul. The grey columns in the background refer to
the data availability, the periods with no or insufficient data are not taken in the
analysis.
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Black Sea Freezing and Winter Severity: Relation...
The results for the daily sea-ice cover in the winters of 2006-2020 period are
shown in Figure 8. It is obvious that freezing occurs every year with exception of
the winters 2006/2007 and latest one 2019/2020. Maximal ice extent is reached in
February 2012 but for relatively short period. The ice coverage in 2006 and 2010
for example is less than that in 2012, but stays for a longer period of time.
Figure 9 shows a combined plot of historical data from 1950-1985 for sea ice
extend (Simonov and Altman, 1991) and our calculations from MAISIE-NH in
the period 2006-2020, processed as described above. Nevertheless global warming
trend, it is clear that the freezing occurs rather regularly which leads to the conclu-
sion that it is result from synoptic situations rather than the seasonal averages.
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Mirna Matov, Elisaveta Peneva, Greta Georgieva
Figure 9. Combined historical data from 1950-1985 from sea ice extent
and data from MAISIE-NH in the period 2006-2020
WINTER CLASSIFICATION
The variation in the ice extent is in agreement with the variations of the WSI and SST.
This allows us to make a classification of the winter in the Black Sea region using the
sea-ice extent and the threshold values for the winter intensity as defined in the Table 1.
In Table 2 the winters in the period from 1926 to 2020 are listed and the type according to
the classification in Table 1 is given. Note that since 2003 no “cold” winter conditions are
observed, and the relative colder moderate winters are classified as Moderate*.
From the winter classification it could be noted that “cold winter” conditions
usually last only one season and the following winter is either mild or moderate.
Rarely there are two cold winters in sequence. In this region the very cold synoptic
situations are due to the Siberian High expanding to the west and reaching the Cen-
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Black Sea Freezing and Winter Severity: Relation...
Figure 10. Winter mean SST measured near the coast in the meteorological
stations in Varna and Burgas.
tral Europe, thus the next step will consider variations of the Siberian High in order
to understand the climate feedback mechanism in the Black Sea region.
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Mirna Matov, Elisaveta Peneva, Greta Georgieva
Since 2003 no real “cold” winter conditions are observed, but 2006, 2012 and
2017 are cool. On the other “warm” end are the winters in 2001, 2007 and 2020.
The winter 2019/2020 is anomalous warm; the mildest from the analysed period.
Future analysis is foreseen to investigate the impact of the Siberian High, as well as
the “buffer” role of the Black Sea.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
REFERENCES
National Ice Center and National Snow and Ice Data Center. Compiled by
F. Fetterer, M. Savoie, S. Helfrich, and P. Clemente-Colón. 2010, up-
dated daily. Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent - Northern Hemisphere
(MASIE-NH), Version 1. Boulder, Colorado USA. NSIDC: National
Snow and Ice Data Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.7265/N5GT5K3K.
[May 6th 2019].
Simonov A. and Altman E (eds) (1991), Hydrometeorology and Hydro-
chemistry of the USSR Seas. Vol. IV. Black Sea. Issue 1. St. Petersburg,
Gidrometeoizdat (in Russian)
Mirna Matov
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9900-0638
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Elisaveta Peneva
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1325-685X
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Greta Georgieva
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
There is a strong degree of agreement that the climate change is the defining
challenge of our time. It will exert influence on the ecosystems, on all branches of
the international economy, and on the quality of life. The globally averaged surface
temperature of the Earth increased 0.85°C over the 1880 to 2012 period. It is
extremely likely that the observed warming of the climate system was caused by
the increased anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2013). However,
immediate damages to humans and their properties as well as to ecosystems are not
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Assessment of the Future Climate Over Southeast Europe...
between the human activities on the one hand and the environment on the
other hand, and their evolution. Unlike the CMIP3 scenarios, the RCPs are
mitigation scenarios that assume policy actions will be taken to achieve certain
emission targets. For CMIP5, four RCPs have been formulated: RCP2.6,
RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. They are based on a range of projections of
future population growth, technological development, and societal responses.
The labels for the RCPs provide a rough estimate of the radiative forcing
in the year 2100 (relative to pre-industrial conditions). RCP2.6 represents
mitigation scenarios that aim to limit the increase of global mean temperature
to <2°C. Different than other RCPs and earlier CMIP3 scenarios, RCP2.6
has a peak in greenhouse gases (GHG) concentration arround 2050 and then
declines at a moderate rate. Under RCP4.5, GHG-emissions will peak around
the early 2050s and then stabilize, causing a CO2 equivalent of about 650
parts per million and a temperature increase of approximately 1.8–2.0°C in
2100, compared to the control period of 1986–2005. RCP8.5, on the other
hand, predicts a continuous rise of GHG emissions until 2100, causing a CO2
equivalent larger than 1370 ppm and a global average temperature increase
close to 4°C (Spinoni et al., 2018).
The CMIP3 and CMIP5 model output are available from the data archives of
the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the
Earth System Grid data distribution portal (ESG). To generate the considered in this
study indices for historical and future time periods, bias-corrected climate datasets
provided through Inter Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP
1), Fast Track simulation round have been used. For each simulation round a set
of gridded bias-corrected climate variables have been produced to be used as input
data for running impact models. These climate datasets contain daily-resolution,
bias-corrected climate data from 5 CMIP5 GCMs according Table 1 covering the
period 1950-2099 (historical run up to 2005), downscaled to a 0.5°×0.5° lat-lon
grid. They cover the global land area.
Note that the models used in this study differ from the models in Chervenkov
& Slavov (2020a, 2020b, 2021). ISIMIP offers significantly fewer models, than the
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Hristo Chervenkov, Vladimir Ivanov, Georgi Gadzhev, Kostadin Ganev
applied in Sillmann et al. (2013b) and Orlowsky & Seneviratne (2012) but these
studies considers only CMIP5 RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 (i.e. not RCP6.0) and
CMIP3 SRES A2 scenario, correspondingly.
2. METHODS
There are various methods to characterize extreme events, but the computation
and analysis of climate indices (CIs) based on daily temperature and precipitation
data is probably the most widely used non-parametric approach (Sillmann
& Röckner, 2007). The modern sets of such indices, among which the most
widely used is the collection of the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection
and Indices (ETCCDI, Zhang et al., 2011), are statistically robust, cover a wide
range of climate conditions, and have a high signal-to-noise ratio (Alexander &
Arblaster, 2009). They are used in several projects on climate change with focus
on different spatial scales, from planetary to continental, regional, national or
local scale, as prevailing indicators of changes of the extreme events (Birsan
et al., 2014). Subsequently, the number of publications on this topic is very
large (Alexander et al., 2006; Frich et al., 2002; Kiktev et al., 2003; Klein Tank
& Können, 2003; Moberg et al., 2006 and many others). Our group has also
previous, partially project-driven, experience in CI-based analysis of historical
(Chervenkov & Slavov 2020a, 2020b), near past and present (Chervenkov et al.,
2019; Chervenkov & Slavov, 2019; Chervenkov & Slavov, 2021; Malcheva et
al., 2016) and projected future regional climate (Gadzhev et al., 2021). The free
availability of databases of Cis or other climate indicators, with focus on different
spatial and temporal scales, facilitates any assessment which includes these
parameters. In Table 2 are listed the main features of some gridded databases
recently used in our group. It is worth to emphasize that the information from
these sources is rarely suitable for direct implementation in the tasks of the
regional climatology. Thus, the data from these sources have to be essentially
post-processed in order to fit to the specific needs.
The present study is based entirely on the data from ISIMIP Fast Track. Although
this project is intended to be a collection of agroclimatic indicators datasets,
most of the indices in scope, inclusive all considered in this study, are based on
the ETCCDI definitions which makes them universal. Agricultural indicators in
ISIMIP Fast Track have been pre-calculated for this complete matrix of 5 GCMs×4
RCPs combinations. In addition, as a proxy for historical observations, the “Watch
Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA-Interim (WFDEI)” (Weedon et al.,
2014) were used to generate observational historical Agroclimatic indicators. This
dataset is available at the same spatial resolution of ISIMIP climate datasets, covers
the time range of 1979 to 2013 and its 30 year long part 1981-2010 is used in the
study as reference for the current climate.
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After the download from the CDS the ISIMIP-datasets are significantly post-
processed. The most essential stages are:
● The datasets for each model and RCP which are downloadable in 30-years
time slices are merged in common data streams for 2011-2099
● The indices with equal temporal resolution are joined in common
netCDF4 files
● Multi-model (MM) ensemble quantities as multi-model mean (MMM), MM
25-, 50- and 75-percentile which are often refereed as lower quartile, median
and upper quartile and traditionally noted as X25, X50 and X75 are computed.
● Due to storage constrains only a spatial subset over Europe is preserved.
All netCDF manipulations are performed with the powerful tool Climate Data
Operators (cdo). Additionally, for the current study only, all of the considered indices
are aggregated in time on annual basis. The aggregation method depend on the
indicator, e.g. min, max, sum, mean. The magnitude of the trend in time as well as
its statistical significance are estimated individually for all grid cells and separately
for each scenario by means of the Theil-Sen slope estimator (TSE) and the Mann-
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Hristo Chervenkov, Vladimir Ivanov, Georgi Gadzhev, Kostadin Ganev
Kendall (MK) test correspondingly. Thus far, the study is constrained over SE Europe
only as will be shown in the next section and with details in the next part.
Figure 1 shows for all variables gradual increase of the projected changes from
RCP2.6 to RCP8.5, i.e. proportional to the radiative forcing. The changes are simi-
lar in magnitude for all parameters for fixed scenario RCP2.6-RCP6.0 and have
not clear spatial structure. For RCP8.5 the changes for TG and TX are exceeding
6oC and are somewhat bigger than the changes for TN. All changes are statistically
significant at the 5% level.
The area-weighted regional averages over land of TN, TG and TX are shown
on Figure 2.
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Figure 2 shows relatively smooth (in comparison with the other Ci’s as will be
shown further) but steady increase of the temperatures with apparent difference
between scenarios in the second half of the century.
The importance of assessing trends in climate extremes is often emphasized
(e.g. Klein Tank & Können, 2003; Meehl et al., 2000; Moberg et al., 2006). The
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions. This
work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
This work has been accomplished with the financial support by the Grant No
BG05M2OP001-1.001-0003, financed by the Science and Education for Smart
Growth Operational Program (2014-2020) and co-financed by the European
Union through the European structural and Investment funds.
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extremes of temperature and precipitation, J. Geophys. Res., 111,
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and modelled climate extremes over Australia in relation to future
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doi:10.1155/2015/354727
Birsan, M. V., Dumitrescu, A., Micu, D.M., Cheval, S. (2014) Changes in
annual temperature extremes in the carpathians since AD 1961. Natural
Hazards 74(3), 1899-1910 doi:10.1007/s11069-014-1290-5
Chervenkov, H., Tsonevsky, I., Slavov, K. (2016) Presentation of Four
Centennial-long Global Gridded Datasets of the Standardized Precipitation
Index, International Journal of Environmental & Agriculture Research
(IJOEAR) ISSN: 2454-1850 Vol. 2, Issue-3, March-2016 pp. 93-105
Chervenkov, H., Slavov, K., Ivanov, V., (2019) STARDEX and ETCCDI
Climate Indices Based on E-OBS and CARPATCLIM; Part One: General
Description, in G. Nikolov et al. (Eds.): NMA 2018, LNCS 11189, pp.
360-367, doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-10692-8 40
Chervenkov, H., Slavov, K. (2019) STARDEX and ETCCDI Climate
Indices Based on E-OBS and CARPATCLIM; Part Two: ClimData in
Use, in G. Nikolov et al. (Eds.): NMA 2018, LNCS 11189, 368-374,
(2019) DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-10692-8 41
Chervenkov, H. Slavov, K. (2020a) Historical Climate Assessment of
Temperature-based ETCCDI Climate Indices Derived from CMIP5
Simulations, Compt. rend. Acad. bulg. Sci., 73, No 6, 784-790, DOI:
10.7546/CRABS.2020.06.05
Chervenkov, H. Slavov, K. (2020b) Historical Climate Assessment of
Precipitation-based ETCCDI Climate Indices Derived from CMIP5
Simulations, Compt. rend. Acad. bulg. Sci., 73, No 7, 942-948, DOI:
10.7546/CRABS.2020.07.06
Chervenkov H., Slavov K. (2021) ETCCDI Climate Indices for Assessment
of the Recent Climate over Southeast Europe. In: Dimov I., Fidanova S.
(eds) Advances in High Performance Computing. HPC 2019. Studies in
Computational Intelligence, vol 902. Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-
3-030-55347-0_34
Dai, A., (2013) Increasing drought under global warming in observations
and models, Nature Clim. Change, 3: 52-58
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Meehl, G. A., Zwiers, F., Evans, J., Knutson, T., Mearns, L., & Whetton, P.
(2000). Trends in extreme weather and climate events: Issues related to
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Moberg, A., et al. (2006) Indices for daily temperature and precipitation
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Moss, R. H. et al. (2010) The next generation of scenarios for climate
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Orlowsky, B. and Seneviratne, S. I. (2012) Elusive drought: uncertainty in
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Ulbrich, U., et al., (2006) The Mediterranean climate change under global
warming. In: Lionello, P., Malanotte-Rizzoli, P., Boscolo, R. (Eds.), R.
(Eds.), Mediterranean Climate Variability. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp.
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Viterbo, P., (2014) The WFDEI meteorological forcing data set: WATCH
Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA‐Interim reanalysis data.
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Clim Change, 2: 851-870. doi:10.1002/wcc.147
Hristo Chervenkov
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7658-3041
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Vladimir Ivanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9768-1049
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Georgi Gadzhev
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-3554
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Kostadin Ganev
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
grid spacing, this study differs, however, from Chervenkov & Slavov (2021) in other
two substantial aspects: first and foremost, the input data (i.e. daily temperatures
and precipitation sums) are bias-corrected, as described by Hempel et al., (2013),
prior the computation of the indices. Although some criticism exists, the general
view in the expert community is that the bias-corrected climate change signal is
more reliable compared with the uncorrected one and thus is more suitable for
impact assessments (Chervenkov & Spiridonov 2020, 2021). Second, the study is
focused on the multi-model statistics (mean, MMX25, MMX50, MMX75) rather
than the simulation output of the individual models. This is modern common
approach, adopted in many recent studies (Orlowsky & Seneviratne, 2012; Sillman
et al., 2013a, 2013b).
4. RESULTS
4.1. TEMPERATURE INDICES
4.1.1. ABSOLUTE AND THRESHOLD INDICES
We start our analysis with a comparison of the spatial patterns of the multiyear
means of the CMIP5 projections of the extreme temperatures, TNn and TXx with
their counterparts for the reference period. In order to intercompare them, the
ensemble median (MMX50) for all 4 scenarios is superimposed to the median for
the reference period, as shown on Fig. 1. for the annual extreme temperatures
Figure 1. MMX50 of the multiyear means of the TNn (first row) and TXx
(second row) for the reference period (1981-2010) in the first column
and multiyear means for 2070-2099 for RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5
in the second, third, fourth and fifth column correspondingly. The absolute
changes of the RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 relative to the reference
period are shown in the sixth seventh eighth and ninth column correspondingly.
Stippling indicates grid points with changes that are not significant
at the 5% significance level. The units are oC.
Figure 1 shows gradual increase of the projected changes of the both indices
from RCP2.6 to RCP8.5, i.e. proportional to the radiative forcing. The greatest
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changes in TNn, exceeding 9oC, are simulated in RCP8.5 over the northern
half of the domain. The most apparent difference between the spatial patterns
of the changes of the TNn and TXx is the stronger temperature increase for
TNn. This difference is well expressed for all four scenarios. Alexander et al.,
(2006) documents analysis of global data base of historical records, revealing
such asymmetric warming. According to their global study (for data since 1951),
changes in daily maximum temperatures are less marked, implying that our world
in many places has become less cold rather than hotter. Other studies, however,
based solely on assimilated European data (see Moberg et al., 2006 and references
therein) suggest that this conclusion is not representative for Europe if the entire
twentieth century is considered. An overall warming is observed also in Moberg
et al., (2006), but they find only a small difference, or no difference at all, between
average trends in daily minimum and maximum temperatures when they average
trends for 75 stations across Europe. According to the future in the CMIP5
projections, Sillmann et al., (2013b) outlines the differences in the changes of
the daily extreme temperatures. In particular, TNn increases more strongly in
higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. It is worth to emphasize also that
our previous study Chervenkov & Slavov (2021), which is conceptually similar
to the present one as underlined above, do not detects clear enough and rigour
evidences for ’warming asymmetry’ between the indices, based on the minimum
temperature from the one hand and these, based on maximum temperature, from
the other hand.
The widely used threshold indices tropical nights (TR) and frost days (FD),
both based on the daily minimum temperature, have limited applicability over the
domain. In the climatological study of the Carpathian region Birsan et al., (2014) is
stated that the changes in the occurrence of TR are substantial only in low-elevation
areas (below 800 m.), located outside the Carpathian Mountains range, which are
particularly exposed to persistent and intense warm spells in summer. Generally, TR
are not characteristic to the climate of the mountain regions, which are significant
part of the domain. Similarly, the FD are not very meaningful for maritime climate
– this is valid for the southern half of the model region and especially for the areas
along the fragmented coastline. Nevertheless, at least for methodological reasons,
analysis of these indices have to be performed as shown on Figure 2 in the case for
their spatial patterns.
Consistent with the changes of the minimum temperature, the fields of the
threshold indices shows progressive (i.e. from RCP2.6 to RCP8.5) decrease of FD
and, contrary to FD, increase of the TR. The vertical gradient of the FD is well
expressed especially along the main Carpathian ridge. The increase of the TR under
RCP2.6, RCP4.5 even RCP6.0 is, over the bigger part of the domain, relatively
small and, which is more important, statistically not significant.
The area-weighted regional averages over land of TNn, TXx, FD and TR, which
will be called area-averages (AA) for sake of brevity henceforth, are shown on
Figure 3.
The overall tendencies, commented above, are markedly expressed for AAs
of all indices. In the recent study Chervenkov & Slavov, (2020a), among other
problems, are analysed the trends of five temperature-based indices, including TNn
and TXx. The trend estimation of the AAs over the domain is based on the gridded
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data base of the HadEX2 project and is for the period 1900-2010. The study reveals
statistically significant increasing trend for the both parameters with bigger lapse
for TNn. These conclusions agrees with the present results, suggesting that the
projected changes are natural continuation of the already detected changes in the
near past and present climate. The analysis of Figure 3 shows also that the CMIP5
interquartile model spreads in the four RCPs practicality remain overlapping for
TXx, FD and TR until the middle and for TNn until the end of the 21st century.
Figure 4. Same as Figure 1 but for the CSDI (first row) and WSDI
(second row). The units are days.
Regarding the CSDI, the most obvious result on Figure 4 is that the small on
magnitude and uniformly distributed during the reference period index practically
disappears in the future even under the scenario with the weakest radiative forcing
(RCP2.6). Subsequently, CSDI remains near zero constant under the other three
scenarios. The change of the WSDI is very expressive both in magnitude and spatial
extent. The differences from RCP to RCP are significant, especially for RCP8.5
compared with others. The absolute increase of WSDI relative to the reference is
drastic: more than three months practically over the whole domain. This result,
rather embarrassing indeed, is in principal agreement with Sillmann et al., (2013b).
The temporal evolution of the considered duration indices is depicted on Figure 5.
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Hristo Chervenkov, Vladimir Ivanov, Georgi Gadzhev, Kostadin Ganev
Figure 5. Same as Figure 2 but for the CSDI (first row) and WSDI
(second row). The units are days.
Figure 5 confirms the outcomes from the analysis of the spatial patterns of the
CSDI and WSDI. Interesting specifics of the dynamics of the AA of the CSDI is
considerable changes in both directions for relatively short time during the reference
period. This is consequence of single abnormally hot and cold years in this time
span documented also in Birsan et al., (2014). The AA of the WSDI during the
whole reference period remains with practically negligible values almost constant.
In contrast, the dynamics in the projected future demonstrates steady increase,
especially for RCP8.5. Consequently, the ensemble median for this scenario is over
150 days around the 2080’s.
is most important, these changes are not statistically significant at the 5% level.
This result agrees with Sillmann et al., (2013b). Similar is the overall picture
with the days with heavy rain distribution: general reduction, approximately up
to a week over the bigger part of the domain, but without substantial difference
from scenario to scenario and without statistical significance over wide areas
for all RCPs, except RCP8.5. It is notable that this result is somewhat different
that the outcomes in Sillmann et al. (2013b): there is shown a small (generally
2-4 days) increase of R10mm over the Balkan Peninsula for all scenarios except
RCP8.5 and decrease in the latter of about 2-4 days. It have to be emphasized,
however, that in this study is noted that the models disagree even on the sign
of change in the total precipitation and R10mm over the Mediterranean. Our
recent experiments with the RCM RegCM driven by the GCM HadGEM2-ES
(Gadzhev et al., 2021) shows prevailing positive change (i.e. increase) for all
seasons except for the summer and on an annual basis. The projected increase
is roughly 25–35% for RCP2.6 and 35–45% for RCP8.5. The expected pre-
cipitation reduction in the summer reaches values of 35–45% for RCP8.5 over
Bulgaria and Romania.
The spatial patterns of the CDD, both in the present and projected future climate
is also complex. Most apparent is the well expressed gradient form southeast to
northwest. The contrary tendencies in the future, increase of the CDD in southeast
and decrease in northwest will leads to strengthening of this contrast. The analysis,
163
Hristo Chervenkov, Vladimir Ivanov, Georgi Gadzhev, Kostadin Ganev
Figure 7. Same as Figure 2 but for the RR (first row) and R10mm
(second row) and CDD (third row). The units are according the subplots titles.
As most remarkable on Figure 7 appears the fact that the evolution lines of RR
and R10mm and in smaller extent these for CDD, respectively their interquartile
ensemble spreads for all scenarios, essentially overlaps for the bigger part of the
time span 2011-2099. Such dynamics is expectable, keeping in mind the relatively
small changes from RCP to RCP commented above. The absence, at least appar-
ent, of big outliers is also remarkable. The inter-model coherency is demonstrated
also in agreement between the models in the simulation of isolated wet years in the
2040s and 2070s in the evolution of the CDD.
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Assessment of the Future Climate Over Southeast Europe Based...
the region (Chervenkov & Slavov, 2019; Chervenkov & Slavov, 2020; Malcheva
et al., 2016; Moberg et al., 2006).
Concerning the precipitation-based indices, the study confirms the complexity of
the expected precipitation-related changes and their inherent ambiguity. The latter
is clearly evidenced by the lower level of statistical significance for the scenarios
RCP2.6-RCP6.0 when compared with temperature changes. It is worth emphasizing
that the projected precipitation reduction over the SE part of the domain and increase
of the CDD could amplify the negative impact of the expected hotter climate.
The study could be continued in many directions. Key moments as, for example,
seasonal variations and detailed regional specifics, could be focal point of further
works. The 10-daily temporal resolution of some indices gives unique possibility
even for sub-sesonal analysis. Other way is to utilize more actively the output of
RCMs, as demonstrated in Belda et al., (2015) and Gadzhev et al., (2021). Such
studies are methodologically reliable scientific basis of various impact studies and
the development of adaptation strategies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions. Hence
this study is entirely based on free available data and software, the authors
would like to express their deep gratitude to the primary CMIP5 model output
vendors as well as all other organizations and institutions (MPI-M, UNI-DATA,
Copernicus Data Store), which provides free of charge software and data.
Without their innovative data services and tools this work would be not possible.
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № Д01-322/18.12.2019).
This work has been accomplished with the financial support by the Grant No
BG05M2OP001-1.001-0003, financed by the Science and Education for Smart
Growth Operational Program (2014-2020) and co-financed by the European
Union through the European structural and Investment funds.
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and modelled climate extremes over Australia in relation to future
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Belda, M., Skalák, P., Farda, A., et al. (2015) CECILIA Regional Climate
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167
Hristo Chervenkov, Vladimir Ivanov, Georgi Gadzhev, Kostadin Ganev
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Ulbrich, U., et al., (2006) The Mediterranean climate change under global
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398-415.
Hristo Chervenkov
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7658-3041
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Vladimir Ivanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9768-1049
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Georgi Gadzhev
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-3554
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Kostadin Ganev
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
169
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: This study is on estimation of the influence of the air mass origin
on particulate matter (PM10) levels in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria during 2019.
The HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) and the
statistical software package “Openair” in R are applied. The cluster analysis statistical
method is used to group the back-trajectories into 5 sets according to the angle,
direction and speed of the air mass. The Potential Source Contribution Function
(PSCF) and Concentration Weighted Trajectory (CWT) statistical methods are also
applied in order to identify source areas of pollutants. The PM10 concentrations
in two air quality stations in Plovdiv and some meteorological elements are also
presented and discussed. The influence of the clusters on PM10 levels is explained.
Keywords: Air quality, PM10, back-trajectories, cluster analysis, PSCF
INTRODUCTION
Air pollution in urban area is one of the main risk factors concerning the human
health in medium and high- developed countries according to the World Health Orga-
nization (WHO, 2019). Major problem with the air quality in some European coun-
tries is the particulate matter (PM) air pollution (EEA Rep. 2018). The major problem
in Bulgarian cities is also air pollution with PM. In our country there is still a problem
with the regulated number of exceedances of PM10 (ЕЕA, 2018). 78.6 % of the
Bulgarian population is exposed to exceedance of the limit values of PM10, while this
percent for Europe is about 21% to 41% (MoEW Report, 2019).The harmful effect of
PM depends on its size (TSP, PM10, PM2.5, PM1), the concentration and the chemical
composition. It is easy for PM to be inhaled into the respiratory tract, where they
can cause inflammatory processes and diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular
systems (Lim et al., 2012; Straif et al, 2013). Despite the plans for improving the air
quality and reduction of the emissions in regional and European scales, the decrease
of the PM concentration during the last years is still unsatisfactory (ЕЕА, 2018). The
PM particles are emitted in the atmosphere by many anthropogenic sources such as
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Application of Backward Trajectories and Cluster...
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. The study area
Plovdiv is city in southern Bulgaria placed in the southern part of the Plain of
Plovdiv on the banks of the Maritsa River. The Sredna Gora mountain range rise to
the northwest, the Chirpan Heights to the east, and the Rhodope mountains to the
south. Plovdiv is the second populated city in Bulgaria, with population 347 851
up to 31.12.2019 according National statistical institute of Republic of Bulgaria
(https://www.nsi.bg/en/content/6710/population-towns-and-sex. The city has been
struggling with poor air quality for years, which mainly results from its location
and limited ventilation and also from cumulative impacts of local, regional and
transboundary emissions. In Plovdiv there are two official air quality stations, part
of the National air quality network, named Plovdiv - Kamenitsa (42.142889° N,
24.765239° E) and Plovdiv - zh.k. Trakia (42.141186° N, 24.787952° E). Both
sites are in urban area, but the Kamenitsa is Background type while zh.k. Trakia is
Traffic (Figure 1).
2.3. Back-trajectories
A daily meteorological analysis was carried out for the study period to identify
the different source regions of the air masses influencing the study area. 3-days
back-trajectories at 04:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC and at 3 different heights above
the starting point located at ground level were computed on a daily basis by using
the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) HYSPLIT 4.0
model (Air Resources Laboratory 2017) (Stein et al. 2015). The weekly archived
data GDAS (Global Data Assimilation System) with resolution 1º were used as
input. The best procedure to illustrate the vertical structure of the atmosphere is to
run trajectories at several heights above the point of interest. 500, 1500 and 2000 m
AGL was chosen in this study.
organizing large data sets into smaller, similar groups. Trajectory coordinates are
used as the clustering variables. CA can be used to classify the air mass origins that
arrive at a site (Dorling et al., 1992; Brankov et al., 1998; Salvador et al., 2008),
but CA does not provide any information on the geographical location of potential
source regions. This information can be obtained by using Potential Source Con-
tribution Function.
Potential Source Contribution Function (PSCF) calculates the probability that
a source is located at latitude 𝑖 and longitude j (Fleming et al.,2012; Pekney et
al.,2006). The basis of PSCF is that if a source is located at (𝑖,𝑗), an air parcel back
trajectory passing through that location indicates that material from the source can
be collected and transported along the trajectory to the receptor site. PSCF solves
(1)
where nij is the number of times that the trajectories passed through the cell (𝑖,𝑗) and
𝑚ij is the number of times that a source concentration was high when the trajecto-
ries passed through the cell (i,j).
The criterion for determining 𝑚ij is controlled by percentile, which is by default
90. Note also that cells with few data have a weighting factor applied to reduce their
effect (The openair Project newsletter Issue 14, February 2013).
Finally, the potential source regions of particles were evaluated by the Con-
centration Weighted Trajectory (CWT) statistical method, available in the above
mentioned “Openair” package computing a concentration field to identify source
areas of pollutants (Seibert et al. 1994). For each cell of the grid domain a weighted
mean concentration of the pollutant species under study is calculated. The weight
for each concentration value of the pollutant’s time series is the time spent in that
grid cell by the associated trajectory. Areas with high CWT values in the concentra-
tion field indicated that, on average, air parcels residing over them resulted in high
concentrations of the atmospheric pollutant at the receptor site. Thus, these concen-
tration fields show those potential source areas whose emissions can be transported
to the measurement site by prevailing synoptic winds (López, V., et al., 2019)
There are some days with PM10 concentration above 50 µg.m-3 during the warm
period of 2019.
Very high differences in the PM10 concentration between Trakia and Kamenitsa
are observed on 11 April, 03 May and 08 August. Probably these cases of exceedance
are due to local sources of air pollution.
The PM10 concentrations for the periods with exceedance are between 54.3 and
194.5 µg.m-3 at the Trakia station and from 50.2 to 169.6 µg.m-3 at the Kamenitsa
station. 24 days with fog are registered and 60 with rain. 90% of cases with rain are
with 0 mm amount. The daily averaged wind speed is ranged from 0.1 to 4 m.s-1.
Figure 3. Cluster analysis (CA) on the left side, PSCF in the middle
and weighted mean PM10 concentration with back-trajectories for 2019
air mass recirculating south (9.2%) and Cluster 5 (C5) is characterized by air mass
coming from the east (20.5%).
The 5 clusters obtained from the set of back-trajectories at 1500 m agl and
2000 m agl presented similar origins but different from the 500 m agl. Clusters
containing back-trajectories coming from the south western and north western (C2
and C4 respectively), are presented similar percentages of trajectories (~27%). C2
and C4 grouped around 60% of all trajectories for each data set. On the other hand,
short scale back-trajectories contained in C5 have represented less than 15% of all
the trajectories with origin in 1500 and 2000 m agl. C3 represented 17-19% of all
back-trajectories.
The PSCF and weighted mean PM10 concentration for three different highs
presented in Figure 3 give us information for source regions of the PM10 component
understudy or as preferred air mass pathways.
The lowest mean concentration values for all data sets were obtained for periods
with north, north-western air mass advection (C1 and C2) (Table 1).
175
Rozeta Neykova, Elena Hristova
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this study different trajectory statistical methods were applied to a set
of 1 year of back trajectories in order to describe the air mass influence on
the atmospheric particulate matter (PM10) levels in Plovdiv. Potential Source
Contribution Function (PSCF) and Concentration Weighted Trajectory
(CWT) methods are applied for the first time on PM data from urban air
quality observations. Air mass back-trajectories were grouped into 5 clusters,
representing a typical meteorological scenario. The results obtained suggest that
the levels of atmospheric particulate matter in Plovdiv could be influenced by
cross-border natural and anthropogenic sources (south, south-wets). To prove
this more studies with input data with higher resolution is needed. The obtained
results are a step towards scientifically based studies on identifying different
source areas of different air pollutants.The development of new methods
enabling identification and assessment of the reasons behind this condition
and their further application for air quality management is necessary. Further
studies on combining observations on PM chemical composition and Trajectory
Statistical Methods are necessary.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was performed with the financial support from the National Programme
“Young scientists and post-doctoral”. We acknowledge also to the NOAA Air
Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT model and
READY website (http://www.ready.noaa.gov) and also to the R-project website
(https://www.r-project.org/) for Package ‘openair’.
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Application of Backward Trajectories and Cluster...
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tion methodology for examining the long-range transport of air pollut-
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Dorling, S.R., Davies, T.D., Pierce, C.E., (1992), Cluster analysis: a tech-
nique for estimating the synoptic meteorological controls on air and pre-
cipitation chemistry – method and applications, Atmospheric Environ-
ment 26A, 2575-2581.
EEA, (2018), Air Quality in Europe-2016 report, Report No 12, European
Environmental Agency, Copenhagen, ISSN 1977-8449
Fleming, Z.L., Monks, P.S. and Manning. A.J.,(2012), Review: Untangling
the influence of air-mass history in interpreting observed atmospheric
composition, Atmospheric Research,104-105:1–39, doi:10.1016/j.at-
mosres.2011.09.009.
López, V., Salvador, P., Artíñano, B. et al. (2019) Influence of the origin
of the air mass on the background levels of atmospheric particulate
matter and secondary inorganic compounds in the Madrid air basin.
Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 30426–30443 https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11356-019-06205-8.
National State of the Environment (SoE) Report, (2019), MoEW, Sofia (in
bulg.)/МОСВ Доклад, 2019. Национален доклад за състоянието и
опазването на околната среда, 2019.
Pekney, N. J. , Davidson C. I., Zhou, L. and Hopke, P. K., (2006), Ap-
plication of PSCF and CPF to PMF-Modeled Sources of PM2.5 in
Pittsburgh.Aerosol Science and Technology, 40(10):952–961, doi:
10.1080/02786820500543324.
Salvador, P., Artíñano, B., Querol, X., Alastuey, A., (2008), A combined
analysis of backward trajectories and aerosol chemistry to characterise
long-range transport episodes of particulate matter: the Madrid air basin,
a case study, Science of the Total Environment 390, 495e506.
Seibert P, Kromp-Kolb H, Baltensperger U, et al (1994) Trajectory analysis
of aerosol measurements at high alpine sites. Transp Transform Pollut
Troposph 15:689–693
Seinfeld J.H. and Pandis N.S., (2006), Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
From Air Pollution to Climate Change, 2-nd Ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
USA. 1225p.
Stein AF, Draxler RR, Rolph GD, et al (2015) NOAA’s HYSPLIT
atmospheric transport and dispersion modeling system. Bull Am
Meteorol Soc 96:2059–2077
Stephen S. Lim et al., (2012), A comparative risk assessment of burden of
disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factor clusters in 21 regions,
177
Rozeta Neykova, Elena Hristova
Rozeta Neykova
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Elena Hristova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5681-4375
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
178
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to assess the relationship between fine
Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations and health indicators for acute morbidity.
The methods used are linear correlation and non-parametric correlation analysis
of a time series study conducted in Sofia from 1 January 2017 to 31 May 2019.
Data from 4 local health sources that cover hospital admissions and all Emergency
Medical Aid registrations from Sofia's population of 1.3 million. Results were
obtained: The mean daily PM10 concentration was 35 μg/m3 with a range from 5 to
336 μg/m3. The mean daily PM2.5 concentration was 11.7 μg/m3 with a range from
2 to 136 μg/m3. In 15.3% of the times, the daily PM2.5 or PM10 concentrations did
not meet the WHO Air Quality Guidelines target during the study period. At these
excesses, acute infections of the upper respiratory tract and pneumonia increase by
47% and 60%, respectively. COPD increases with 36%, there are also changes and
acute bronchitis. Conclusions: The findings provide a justification that exceeds the
concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 were significantly associated with indicators of
acute morbidity in Sofia.
Keywords: particulate matter, acute morbidity, health indicators, PM10, PM2.5.
INTRODUCTION
The human health effects of exposure to outdoor air pollutants is considered a
global health concern (Thurston et al., 2017). The links between urban air pollution
and human health are consistently and clearly established by many researchers
(J. Samet & Krewski, 2007) (Li et al., 2013), especially for short-term effects
such as cardiovascular events (Vermylen, Nemmar, Nemery, & Hoylaerts, 2005),
neurovascular (Tallon, Manjourides, Pun, Salhi, & Suh, 2017; Wing et al., 2017)
and asthma (Ward & Ayres, 2004).
Significant literature of epidemiologic studies suggests a correlation between
acute morbidity and exposure to air pollution from particulate matter (Pope,
179
Petar Zhivkov, Aleksandar Simidchiev
Dockery, & Schwartz, 1995). Most of this data comes from time series analyses
(Bell, Samet, & Dominici, 2004) comparing the variations in hospitalization with
the average particulate matter variations (Dominici, Sheppard, & Clyde, 2003).
Also, multicity studies exist such as the European Air Pollution and Health: a
European Approach (APHEA) project (Katsouyanni et al., 1996) and the American
National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) (J. M. Samet
et al., 2000) that both provide a consistent evidence for association health and air
pollutants for multiple cities by covering a large geographic area.
The consequences of air pollution can be seen as an enhancement to a person's
risk of illness or injury or as an additional general well-being risk acquired by a
population (Gochfeld & Burger, 2011). The aim of air quality management is to
control or avoid adverse impacts on air pollution to public health. Therefore, it
is important to define such effects that are deemed "adverse," and to distinguish
them from those effects that are not deemed adverse, thus concentrating protection
efforts on the contaminants that cause the most extreme health impacts.
For the purpose of this research we will use the WHO guidelines as they are
advisable worldwide and having purely health aspects in the consideration, while
the EU Directive includes some also politico-economic aspects in recital.
Case study
Sofia is the only European capital situated in a valley and is characterized by
high quantity of anthropogenic emissions and by frequent occurrence of stagnant
meteorological conditions. The city has a population of 1.2 million people (NSI,
2019) and is situated in the Sofia valley. The area is recognized as a problematic
location where especially during winter there are numerous exceedances despite
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Relationship Between Particulate Matter and Health...
the European legislation that aims at air pollution control. The combination of cold
winters and its situation predisposes to temperature inversions that last several days
to a week.
Many urban areas located in a valley without adequate air exchange encounter
significant air pollution problems that are linked with the local atmospheric pecu-
liarities (Rendón, Salazar, Palacio, Wirth, & Brötz, 2014). A strong inversion and
light precipitation and/or wind were the major causes for trapping pollutants in the
air mainly during winter time. The air quality in Sofia deteriorates significantly dur-
ing winter compared to summer. Hence it will be a good model to test our hypoth-
esis of a significant link between air pollution and health consequences.
The literature abounds with models that can be used to assess the pollution/
health hypothesis. A correlation between temperature and mortality around Sofia is
made by using models with linear and non-linear terms (Pattenden, Nikiforov, &
Armstrong, 2003). Other research that examines the genotoxicity of ambient air in
3 European cities, including Sofia shows that winter air pollution is six- to 10-fold
higher in comparison with summer air (Gábelová et al., 2004).
This will be the first such study with real data from official and civil sources
of information on particulate air pollution, comprehensive data from the activities
of the center for emergency medical care, data from two of the largest hospitals
related to the access to emergency care in Sofia. The results can be compared and
contrasted with other international studies with local data.
The research uses the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and more
specifically ICD-10 for segmentation of the diseases and the identified morbidity.
ICD-10 is the 10th revision of the ICD, a medical classification list by the World
Health Organization (WHO) that is used by the time this study is conducted. It
contains codes for diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints,
social circumstances, and external causes of injury or diseases (Organization,
1978, 2018).
Methods
For this research we use a time series analysis with correlation methods for
analyzing the air quality and health data. The statistical methods in the research fall
in the two categorizations: parametric and nonparametric. Parametric comparisons
are based on the premise that the variable is continuous and normally distributed.
Nonparametric approaches are used where data is continuous with non-normal
distribution or any other form of data other than continuous variables.
The parametric Pearson correlation test (1) is used for comparing the two sourc-
es of air quality data. It provides a measure of the linear association between the
two continuous variables (usually just referred to as correlation coefficient). To
conduct the test, correlation coefficients are calculated for each (x,y) pair, and the
values of x and y are subsequently replaced with their ranks. Application of the test
results in a correlation coefficient that ranges from -1 to 1.
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Relationship Between Particulate Matter and Health...
(1)
Parametric methods are better ways to measure the difference between the
groups relative to their equivalent nonparametric methods, but due to certain strict
criteria, including data normality and sample size, we cannot use parametric tests in
any situation and instead use their alternate nonparametric methods:
• For correlation analysis between pairs of variables is also used the non-para-
metric method Spearman's rho (2).
(2)
RESULTS
The results for daily concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 are summarized in Table
2. The mean daily PM10 concentration was 35 μg/m3 with a range from 5 to 336 μg/
m3. The mean daily PM2.5 concentration was 11.7 μg/m3 with a range from 2 to
136 μg/m3. 13.2% of the daily PM10 or PM2.5 concentrations did not meet WHO
Air Quality Guidelines target (50 μg/m3 for PM10 and 25 μg/m3 for PM2.5) during
the study period. Some of the sources of health effects were with missing data for
weekends (Saturday, Sunday, public holidays), so an analysis of gaps to exclude the
possibility of bias was undertaken.
Table 2. Daily concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 divided into working days
and weekends + holidays
Day of the
Source N Mean Median SD Min Max Percentiles Z P
week
working day 522 34,17 27,5 30,67 5 336 20 36
PM10 0,76 0,4
weekend 230 37,1 26 38,45 6 290 18 38
working day 522 11,15 9 12,61 2 104 4 14
PM2,5 0,09 0,9
weekend 230 12,93 8 17,13 2 113 3 16
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Petar Zhivkov, Aleksandar Simidchiev
The conclusions are that there are no significant differences between weekends
and working days in PM levels, and the lack of medical data for the weekends
would not significantly affect the relevance of the results.
The correlation between the two sources of information for air quality (official
satiations from EEA and citizen stations from AirBG) is significant PM10 (n = 340)
PM2.5 (n = 296) as seen in Table 3. and corresponds to other sources comparing
these sources (National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology and AirSofia.info).
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185
Petar Zhivkov, Aleksandar Simidchiev
Hip. diseases -2,154 0,031 -2,365 0,018 -1,550 0,121 -2,476 0,013
Rit. diseases -1,536 0,125 -0,894 0,371 -1,490 0,136 -3,282 0,001
Acute heart failure -0,248 0,804 -3,369 0,001 -2,414 0,016 -2,028 0,043
In the data of hospitalized patients with more serious condition, we observe the
following correlations (Table 8 and Table 9). An increase (relative to background
levels) of respiratory and thoracic diseases from the 1st to the 3rd day after excess
of PM10 by 120%, as well as heart failure in the same time period by 18%. Excess
PM2.5 was associated with a 59% increase in pulmonary embolism rate on days 2
and 3, with a 19% increase in heart failure on days 1 to 3.
Name of the Without LAG LAG period LAG period LAG period
disease / identified ICD-10 period 1 day 2 days 3 days
morbidity Z p Z p Z p Z p
Respiratory system C30-
-1,504 0,133 -2,211 0,027 -2,870 0,004 -2,862 0,004
and chest C39
Heart failure I50 -1,729 0,084 -3,656 <0,001 -3,475 0,001 -2,821 0,005
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Petar Zhivkov, Aleksandar Simidchiev
Acute infections of the upper respiratory tract and pneumonia 0-3 days increase
by 47% and 60%, respectively, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
after a day is 36% more, there are changes and acute bronchitis. Regarding asthma,
the allergic asthma records raise more in days with increased pollution in com-
parison to non-allergic asthma. In the other studied diseases shown in Table 10 and
Table 11, a smaller correlation is seen.
CONCLUSIVE COMMENTS
In conclusion, similar to data from published studies in cities in Europe, America
and Asia, increased levels of air pollution are associated with higher levels of
diagnosing health consequences. The process of exposure and impact is complex,
and it is very difficult to obtain accurate measurements except in an exposure
chamber, but with the methods of epidemiological studies and population statistics
it becomes clear that pollution leads to predictable increases in disease and hence
adverse economic consequences for society.
Low-cost stations have a significant error threshold (10%) and a problem
when humidity levels exceed 70%. Even if a better sensor of this type is used,
the fog still distorts the results as it is detected as dust (shows increased values).
But still they are highly valuable for explaining how air pollution affects health
as they show a lot more about what we actually breathe specifically near our own
home and vicinity compared to official sensors. This pollution data can include
the background pollution, as well as heating of neighboring buildings or homes,
burning garbage, barbecue nearby, cars under the window and even wind picking
up dust from the dirty facade. Official stations should meet the requirements for
distance, classification, etc. They are intentionally not placed directly next to
sources of pollution because their purpose is to account for background pollution.
Future research:
With few exceptions, short-term health effects are measured by using averaged
citywide air pollution concentrations for exposure indicators. This can lead to
exposure misclassification and thus to bias (Laurent et al., 2008). Measurements
of the relations between health effects and air pollution can be improved with more
geographically precise exposure measurements and a method to calculate personal
exposure during the day, and compare it to the health condition of each individual.
There are methods to reduce the error threshold (10%) in low-cost stations, but
there is a risk to have a lower consistency in the measurements and make the individual
station more expensive and thus make it not feasible for having such high quantity.
Lastly, economic effects of air pollution on a local level worth further
investigation. Existing software such as EPA’s BenMap can be adapted to local
aspects such as concentration-response relationships, population files, and health
and economic data to quantify these impacts.
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Relationship Between Particulate Matter and Health...
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments to improve the paper, but also, to the hospitals Pirogov, Tokuda, the
Emergency Medical Aid Sofia, Faculty of Public Health at MU Sofia, Sofia
Municipality, Air for Health, Air Solutions, and air.bg the for kindly providing
the data for this research.
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Petar Zhivkov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5687-5277
Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Aleksandar Simidchiev
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4643-9388
Medical Institute of Ministry of Interior
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
193
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
NOCTURNAL BOUNDARY-LAYER
CHARACTERISTIC IN A COSTAL SITE USING
LONG-TERM SODAR DATA
INTRODUCTION
The recent significant technological development of ground-based instru-
ments for remote sensing made them most reliable and indispensable to study of
the main meteorological parameters and turbulence in the ABL (Cimini, Marzano,
& Visconti, 2011; Coulter & Kallistratova, 2004; Dirk, 2009; Emeis, 2011; A.
Illingworth et al., 2013; Peña et al., 2016). Substantial interest in coastal ABL is
noted, due to the complexity of the transformation processes at the abrupt change
in the physical characteristics of the surface. The challenges in describing coastal
processes are related to IBL formation and its height growing with the distance
from the shore (Batchvarova, 2006; Hsu, 1986). Due to the formation of sublayers
and the presence of local circulation in coastal zones, the atmosphere is complexly
194
Nocturnal Boundary-layer Characteristic in a Costal...
flat grassland at about 400 m inland and 30 m height above sea level. The coast line
is stretching out from NNW to SSE with a steep about 10m high cost (Figure 1 –
left and middle). For studying the wind profiles and turbulence in coastal ABL, an
acoustic mono-static Doppler remote sensing system - SCINTEC Flat Array Sodar
MFAS was used with a frequency range of 1650-2750 Hz, 9 emission / reception
angles (0 °, ± 9.3 °, ± 15.6 °, ± 22.1 °, ± 29 °), a vertical range from150 m to 1000
m and a vertical resolution of 10 m. The accuracy of wind speed measurement is
0.1 - 0.3 ms-1 and for the wind direction is 2 - 3 Deg. The sodar system is mounted
on the roof of the administrative building of MO Ahtopol (Figure 1 - right) at an
approximate height of 4.5 m. The data records were made every 10 minutes and
the average period is 20 minutes. The first measurement level is 30 m and the
maximum vertical range for the study reaches 700 m.
710 m and 4 bars over 810 m. In this study all profiles are up to 700 m due to low
availability of data above that height.
Applied analyzes
For the presented analysis, the direction from 0 to 120 Deg was assigned for
marine air masses and direction from 170 to 290 Deg for the air masses from land.
The entire 3014-day study period contains total of 2708 days with measurements,
representing nearly 90% availability. А summary of the analyzes of the marine air
masses and those from the land are presented in Table 2.
Firstly, all nocturnal land (brown color) and marine (blue color) air masses are
studied, and then separately for cold and warm parts of the year to reveal specific
coastal ABL characteristics. The cold part of the years is defined from November to
March and the warm part from May to September (Table 2- first column). Due to the
presence of breeze circulation in the studied area, the number of profiles involved
in the averaged characteristics of land air masses (10.5 %) are significantly higher
than marine air masses profiles (2.5 %). The conditions fulfilled in the various
analyzes (fourth column at Table 2) are as follows:
1* - continuous profiles to fixed heights with simultaneous availability of 12
sodar output parameters (wind direction /WD/, wind speed and its dispersion /
WS, sigWS/, vertical wind speed and its dispersion /W, sigW /, horizontal wind
speed components and their dispersions /U, sigU, V, sigV/, eddy dissipation rate
/EDR/, turbulent intensity /TI/ and turbulent kinetic energy /TKE/);
2 - continuous profiles with a minimum height of 110 m and simultaneous
availability of 12 sodar output parameters;
3 - profiles consisting of a minimum of 3 points in height satisfying the wind
direction condition and permitting an interruption only for lack of data.
The complexity of different fulfilled conditions in the extracted profiles (1*, 2
or 3) determines the number of profiles involved in the various analyzes (Table 2 -
third column) and the maximum height to which the average profiles reach (Table 2
- second column). The lowest availability of profiles is observed under the strongest
condition 1* - continuous profiles of the 12 different parameters simultaneously
to fixed heights (150 m, 250 m, 270 m, 300 m, 320 m, 350 m, 450 m and 550 m).
The complexity of fulfilling this condition lies in the fact that there can be heights
with missing data or such rejected by the signal quality algorithms of the instru-
ment. Using conditions 2 and 3 results in averaged profiles based on different data
availability at different heights, while the condition 1* implies the same numbers
of values across all heights. In this paper we analyze data fulfilling conditions 2 and
3, in order to use all data up to 700 m. During nights the range of the sodar allows
to search the ABL height in the data as it can be stable ABL over land or stable/
convective ABL over sea, while during days the convective ABL height over land
is well above the range of the instrument.
197
Damyan Barantiev, Ekaterina Batchvarova
and different (18 616 profiles) 4.3 % 350*/ 320*/ 300*/ 799*/ 1 224*/ 1 596*/ 1*/ 1*/ 1*/
198
Nocturnal Boundary-layer Characteristic in a Costal...
■ Nocturnal land air masses and condition 2 during the warm part of the year
Averaged nocturnal land air masses (May to September) are presented in
Figure 3. The analysis with condition 2 is chosen to ensure availability of
data on all levels up to 110 m and all 12 sodar parameters simultaneously.
This set allows to identify peculiarity of signal at specific heights with higher
confidence. These individual profiles constitute about 30% of all registered
nocturnal land air masses (Table 2). Well expressed changes near 400 meters
are observed in all graphics. The observed peaks in the sigW, EDR and TKE
mean profiles are with maximum at 410 m (98 individual profiles). Almost a
linear decrease in the averaged TI profile is observed after the main peak at
140 m (2412 individual pro files) and it is interrupted by a second smaller peak
at 430 m (59 individual profiles). This result is the reason for the peak in the
mean sigW, EDR and TKE profiles in Figure 2 at 430 m. Close to the ground, at
a height between 50 and 80 m, changes in the sigW, EDR, TI and TKE profiles
suggest the SL height.
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Damyan Barantiev, Ekaterina Batchvarova
Figure 3. Averaged nocturnal land air masses characteristics during warm part
of the year with performed condition 2. Details as in Fig. 2
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Nocturnal Boundary-layer Characteristic in a Costal...
CONCLUSIONS
The presented results for all nocturnal land air masses with applied condition 3
show a super position of all seasonal profiles with imposed minimum restriction in
their selection. Reducing the number of profiles only during the warm part of the
year with applied condition 2 confirmed the results and increased the confidence in
them. Choosing of the warm period suggests neutral and slightly stable air masses
above land, which allows to search ABL height within the range of the sodar. The
third analysis is performed at minimum restrictions (condition 3) and for the cold
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Damyan Barantiev, Ekaterina Batchvarova
period when the sea is relatively warmer than the air and neutral or slightly unstable
stratification of the ABL is expected. During warm periods, due to the land breeze,
the number of marine nocturnal flows is very small.
The analysis is based on 82% of the data on nocturnal land air masses. The
nocturnal air masses from the land were characterized by prevailing conditions
between neutral and slightly stable stratification. Indications of a nocturnal stable
ABL height at 410-430 m and corresponding SL height of 50-80 m were identified.
Prevailing conditions of neutral stratified and slightly unstable stratification
were revealed in the results for nocturnal marine air masses. Indication of nocturnal
IBL height of about 40 – 50 m and a nocturnal marine ABL of about 300 m were
identified.
Such analyzes allow not only climatological studies for a number of ABL
parameters, but also assessing the fraction of time when theoretical profiles can be
used in coastal areas.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science
under the National Research Programme “Young scientists and postdoctoral
students” approved by DCM # 577 / 17.08.2018
REFERENCES
Barantiev, D., Batchvarova, E. and Novitsky, M. (2017). Breeze circulation
classification in the coastal zone of the town of Ahtopol based on data
from ground based acoustic sounding and ultrasonic anemometer.
Bulgarian Journal of Meteorology and Hydrology (BJMH), 22(5), 24.
Batchvarova, E. (2006). Theoretical and experimental studies of the
atmospheric boundary layerover different surface types. (Dissertation
for obtaining the scientific degree Doctor of Physical Sciences (Doctor
Habil.). Scientific specialty: Meteorology 01.04.11), National Institute
of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) and the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences (BAS), Sofia.
Batchvarova, E., Cai, X., Gryning, S.-E., & Steyn, D. (1999).
Modelling internal boundary-layer development in a region with
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doi:10.1023/A:1001751219627
Batchvarova, E., & Gryning, S.-E. (1998). Wind climatology, atmospheric
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MEDCAPHOT-TRACE experiment. Atmospheric Environment, 32(12),
2055–2069. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-2310(97)00422-6
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203
Damyan Barantiev, Ekaterina Batchvarova
Damyan Barantiev
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9908-9014
Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research Institute
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ekaterina Batchvarova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1293-9440
Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research Institute
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
204
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
The nowadays knowledge on quarry activities, based on modern technologies
and research, has significantly reduced the effect of quarries on the environment.
However, the extraction of rock materials from the landscape cannot be performed
without causing environmental consequences.
The engineering processes, related to the extraction and treatment of the rock
materials, leads to a change in the use of the land, scenery, and geomorphology.
Responsible operational practices can be used to control and keep at tolerable lev-
els the engineering impacts (Luttig, 1994; Langer & Arbogast, 2002; Jin, Chen &
Soboyejo, 2015; Edokpayi, Odiyo & Shikwambana, 2016). However, the environ-
mental effects could have a cascade form: the engineering activities provoke a reac-
tion of the natural system, which, in turns, leads to another environmental reaction,
and on and on. Cascading effects could influence the environment beyond the limits
of the quarry activities (Langer, 2001).
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Radostina Angelova, Rositsa Velichkova, Sylvia Alexandrova
Geomorphic impact
The principal geomorphic impact of quarrying is associated with rocks and
stones removal. It results in a dramatic effect on the landscape, destroys the natural
habitat of relicts, affects natural sinkholes and caves (Dávid, 2010). The size of the
geomorphic impact depends on the location of the quarry and its size. The disad-
vantage is that all quarries increase in size over time. Stanton (1996) researched
the advantages of deep quarrying, as it was found that the geomorphic impact of
numerous small quarries is worse than the effect of a large size quarry.
Blasting strongly preconditions the geomorphic impact of quarrying. Due to
poor control or design of the blasts, stones could be projected far beyond the blast
site that is considered to be a serious hazard (Langer, 2001). Besides the rock crush
from the quarry face, the blast energy provokes vibrations in both the ground and
air. The earth vibrations could lead to ground shaking and additional geomorphic
impact: fracture of the walls of the quarry, collapse of caves, change in the sub wa-
ter trajectory. Blasting could initiate even flooding events (Tan et al., 2020).
Air pollution
Air pollution in the form of dust particles of different size occurs due to blasting and
both digging and crushing the rocks. Dust is one of the most visible and potentially irri-
tating impacts of the quarry on workers, nearby settlements, and the ecosystem (Sayara,
2016). The amount of air pollution depends on the type of rocks, humidity, scale of the
excavation works, air currents and prevailing winds, as well as the presence of other
nearby sources of dust. As the quarry terrain recedes, the effects of dust air pollution,
dust deposition and hazardous impacts rapidly diminish (Gunn & Gagen, 1987).
Noise
The main source of quarry noise is blasting, drilling, the processing machines,
and stones-moving machines. Truck traffic can also be an important source of the
noise. The impact of noise strongly depends on the sound source, terrain, climatic
conditions. The noise is more noticeable in cold and humid days than in hot sum-
mer days (Angotzi et al., 2005) In an urban or industrial environment, background
noise can mask the noise of quarry operation, while the same noise level in a rural
or quiet residential suburb may be more noticeable to humans. The noise could
adversely affect biota (Christian, 2003).
Water impact
Usually, the first impact of the quarry on the landscape is the removal of superfi-
cial vegetation and soil. In temperate areas, this reduces evaporation and increases
effective rainfall. Excavation works can direct surface water to the groundwater
system. If runoff and sediment control measures are not taken, groundwater dete-
rioration is possible (Gunn & Hobbs, 1999).
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Environmental Impact of Quarry Activities: The Case Study...
The quarry can cause the collapse of the sinkhole, which can lead to the capture of
surface water. At the same time, blasting operations can close existing groundwater pas-
sages or open a new passageway, leading to a change in the direction of groundwater
and risk of contamination. Blasting itself does not necessarily affect groundwater qual-
ity: Moore and Hughes (1979) found that there was no relationship between blasting
and water quality in springs. Large amounts of slime and other quarry products (fuel,
waste, oil) can pollute both rivers and groundwater far beyond the quarry field.
Biota
Any species that inhabit the rocks, destroyed by the quarry, are at risk. Some
species are limited to special habitats (e.g. single cave systems) and are little known.
White et al. (1995) reported the discovery of 47 species of aquatic and terrestrial
invertebrates in the Movile Cave and its surrounding springs, 30 of which have
been completely unknown and are considered endemic.
The quarry destroys the rocky habitats or the passages to them. Only animals that are
mobile and can find new homes survive. The other species die. The quarry can disturb
active groundwater courses or lead to their blockage with adverse consequences for the
species. The risk to groundwater and the diversion of surface water may lead to the dry-
ing up of surface and groundwater hydrological systems with the relevant biota.
It has been found that noise and air concussions can disrupt habitats at a dis-
tance of 1500 m from the quarry (Vermeulen & Whitten, 1999). Noise interferes with
communication signals between animals, masks the sounds of predators and prey,
and can even cause temporary or permanent hearing loss (Fletcher & Busnel, 1978).
In dry weather, dust, if uncontrolled, can spread through the air, penetrate the
soil, and create harmful conditions for flora and fauna (Fletcher & Busnel, 1978).
If it suffocates the leaf surface, the vegetation can be damaged due to inhibited gas
exchange and reduced photosynthesis (Howard & Cameron, 1998).
The present study was performed in a real quarry for extraction of gneiss:
the “Buchaka” quarry, near the city of Blagoevgrad. The aim of the study was to
assess the impact of the quarry on the environment and to suggest activities for
improvement of the present situation.
single low-stemmed trees and shrubs. The slope of the terrain is about 30 - 40 ° in
the southeast direction. The displacement between the lowest and highest parts of
the deposit is 50 m on average. Its altitude varies between 350 - 410 m. The lowest
exploitation level of the deposit is above the level of the local erosion base (Struma
River that flows in the vicinity, east of the deposit). The dominated cracked and
broken rocks facilitate the drain of the fallen atmospheric precipitation in depth.
The gneisses (Fig. 2) can be used for making road groundworks (not treated
with binders) for very light, light, and medium category of traffic. They could also
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Environmental Impact of Quarry Activities: The Case Study...
Engineering characteristics
The characteristics of the excavation works in the quarry are as follows:
• Height of the working step:
○ up to 17 m for level 390 m;
○ 20 m for level 370 m;
○ up to 14 m for level 356 m.
• Angle of inclination of the working step: 75°;
• Angle of inclination of the final non-working board: 65°;
• General angle of inclination on a non-working board: 51°;
• Minimum width of the work site: 40 m;
• Width of the safety berms: 5 m;
• Slope for gravity drainage of the levels: 1% to the south-east.
• primary works – with the help of which the mineral is diverted from the
massif;
• secondary – for additional fragmentation of the oversized pieces obtained
during the primary blasting.
The primary blasting works are carried out with via blasting wells. Secondary
drilling and blasting works are performed by open charges or blasting holes
(depending on the size of the oversized piece) or are crushed with a hydraulic
excavator-hammer. The annual opencast in the “Buchaka” quarry is 9180 m3, which
corresponds to 75 m3 per working day.
Before the explosion, a signal is given with a siren. After the explosion, but not
earlier than 30 minutes, the detonation field is inspected for failures. People and
equipment are allowed working in the field no earlier than 14 hours after the blasting.
The nearest neighbouring objects are outside the range of the safe distance of
400.0 m. Due to the proximity of the gravel pit, the work there during the blasting
works stops and both people and machinery are evacuated outside the safe area.
The posts guarding the blasting works are located outside the protected zone with a
radius in all directions of the blasting field of not less than 400.0 m.
To prevent gassing after blasting, the safety procedures in the quarry state that
people should enter the quarry after a mandatory measurement with a gas analyzer.
In addition, it is recommended to carry out mass blasting once a quarter – on the
last day of the working week.
A systematic survey of the behaviour of the slopes is organized to establish movements
in the working sides of the quarry and to take effective measures to prevent landslides or
falling of individual rocks. To protect the neighbouring agricultural and forest lands from
disturbance and pollution, no movement of machines and disposal of materials and waste
is allowed on them. The produced crushed fractions and the technological waste from the
processing of rock materials are placed at designated places.
On the 26th of September 2017 (Tuesday) the blasting works in the quarry
however led to effect of a shock wave, which was felt in the city of Blagoevgrad
in the form of an earthquake (http://pirinsko.com). The check in the European-
Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) showed that there were no registered
earthquakes in the region that could be felt in city of Blagoevgrad. The further
questioning showed that the population of the Buchino village complained en
masse about the explosions in the quarry. People also commented their worry about
the possible change in the sub water trajectory, as all households in the village are
supplied with water from underground sources. The real water impact of the quarry
is commented below.
Air pollution
Blasting operations and the additional on-site fragmentation of the oversized
pieces (Fig. 3) provoke the appearance of in-air particles of different size. The
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Environmental Impact of Quarry Activities: The Case Study...
access of dust particles into the human lungs depends on their physical size and
chemical composition (MacNee & Donaldson, 2003). Large particles may not be
able to penetrate the upper respiratory system. Most particles with an aerodynamic
diameter of over 10 μm are thought to be unlikely to enter the airways of the lungs
(Tranter, 2004).
As the air-pollution is strongly related to the humidity, irrigation of both work
sites and transport routes in the quarry are performed during each shift. The ban
on access 14 hours after the blasting operations leads to the deposition of dust
particles before the presence of workers in the quarry. Mining equipment and
vehicles that do not meet the requirements for the concentration of pollutants in
the exhaust gases are not allowed to operate. All the equipment passes annual
technical inspections.
Noise
The quarry and its management are responsible for assuring that the emitted
noise is within the levels, set by regulations. The quarry site is located away from
populated areas. However, the relief could hardly be used as a sound-deadening
structure. То decrease the noise of transportation, conveyors could be used for in-
pit movement of materials.
Noisy operations could be limited to certain times of the day. Similar to blasting,
the noisy operations could be scheduled. A problem is the very close location of the
in-pit cite to the village (Fig. 4), which could be seen from Fig. Personal protective
211
Radostina Angelova, Rositsa Velichkova, Sylvia Alexandrova
equipment is foreseen for all workers in the quarry, including the drivers of the
heavy machinery and trucks.
Water impact
The quarry exploits the high parts of the sloping hill, which is intensely cracked,
cavernous in places. Аt the establishment of the quarry, the risk assessment for the
water resources were assessed as low. During the exploration works, no outflows
of water or water levels in the deposit were recorded. Fallen precipitation quickly
drains to a depth below the lowest operating level on the horizon + 390 m. The
hydrogeological conditions could be defined as simple.
Biota
A preliminary assessment of the effect of the quarry on the biota had not been
performed. In any case, the quarry works have changed the habitat of some animals,
due to the human presence, blasting and noise. The effect on plants is smaller, as the
low-strength soil layer is 5-10 cm thick and disappears on several places. However,
all species, inhabiting the rocks, are at risk.
The start of reclamation is considered to be the beginning of the end of a career's
environmental impact (Langer, 2001). Just as the natural resource of the quarry is
used to improve the quality of human life, so the reclamation of the landscape im-
proves the quality of human life. A design plan is needed for the good formation of
the land from the field. There are examples of the use of quarries for recreational,
tourist and even residential purposes [26]. But for the biota, it is much more impor-
tant to recultivate the massif. There are examples of organized reclamation of rock
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Environmental Impact of Quarry Activities: The Case Study...
CONCLUSIONS
The performed analysis highlighted the impact of “Buchaka” quarry works
on the environment. The assessment showed that the quarry has a considerable
impact on the natural landscape, natural resources, and biota. However, the right
management and planning could minimize the negative effects and put them into
control. The analysis showed that most of the prescriptions of the legislation are
followed in “Buchaka” quarry. However, blasting operations and noise from drilling,
machinery works, and trucks are the main sources of risks for the population in the
vicinity. The impact on biota is still not highlighted enough. Plans for the further
re-cultivation of the area should be elaborated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
“Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters”, approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № ДО-230/06-12-2018).
REFERENCES
Angotzi, G., Bramanti, L., Tavarini, D., Gragnani, M., Cassiodoro, L.,
Moriconi, L., ... & Bovenzi, M. (2005). World at work: Marble quarrying
in Tuscany. Occupational and environmental medicine, 62(6), 417 – 421.
Arbogast, B. F., Knepper, D. H., & Langer, W. H. (2000). The human factor
in mining reclamation (Vol. 1191). US Department of the Interior, US
Geological Survey.
BDS EN 12620:2002+A1:2008 (2017). Aggregates for concrete – National
Annex (NA)
BDS EN 13043:2005+AC:2005 (2017). Aggregates for bituminous
mixtures and surface treatments for roads, airfields and other trafficked
areas – National Annex.
Christian, J. (2003). White’s Cove quarry blasting: potential impacts on
American lobster. LGL Limited, St. John’s, NL.
Dávid, L. (2010). Quarrying and other minerals. In Anthropogenic
Geomorphology, 113 – 130, Springer, Dordrecht.
Edokpayi, J. N., Odiyo, J. O., & Shikwambana, P. P. (2016). Seasonal
variation of the impact of mining activities on Ga-Selati River in
Limpopo Province, South Africa. International Journal of Biological
and Ecological Engineering, 10(2), 156 – 161.
213
Radostina Angelova, Rositsa Velichkova, Sylvia Alexandrova
214
Environmental Impact of Quarry Activities: The Case Study...
Tan, Y., Zhang, S., Guo, W., Liu, X., & Shen, B. (2020). Mine Stability and
Water Inrush in Coal Mine. In Modelling Rock Fracturing Processes,
361 – 403. Springer, Cham.
Tranter, M. (2004). Occupational hygiene and risk management. Allen &
Unwin.
Vermeulen, J., & Whitten, T. (1999). Biodiversity and cultural property
in the management of limestone resources: lessons from East Asia. The
World Bank.
White, W. B., Culver, D. C., Herman, J. S., Kane, T. C., & Mylroie, J. E.
(1995). Karst lands. American scientist, 83(5), 450 – 459.
Radostina A. Angelova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6943-7695
Centre for Research and Design in Human Comfort, Energy and Environment
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Rositsa Velichkova
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3757-8685
Centre for Research and Design in Human Comfort, Energy and Environment
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Sylvia Alexandrova
Department of Hydroaerodynamics and Hydraulic Machines
Technical University of Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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https://doi.org/10.48365/envr-2020.1.19 Biodiversity
INTRODUCTION
Buxus L. (with common names box or boxwood) is a genus of about 100 species
in the family Buxaceae, native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern
and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South America, Central
America, Mexico and the Caribbean (http://www.theplantlist.org1). One of the most
popular species of the Old world is Buxus sempervirens L. (European box), native
to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia. It represents
a small tree or shrub with small evergreen leaves and can reach 800 years of age.
Although the species does not belong to the native flora of Bulgaria, for many
years, boxwoods have been one of the most popular and widely used landscaping
plants, in the form of ornamental shrubs or dense, evergreen hedges in shady places
216
Peniophora Proxima (Peniophoraceae, Basidiomycota)...
(Jordanov, 1979). It is found in parks, gardens and yards throughout the country.
In the past, boxwood has been used also to treat persistent and recurrent fever
due to malaria, gout, rheumatism, urinary tract infections, hemorrhoids (Tashev
& Tsavkov, 2008) and in some in folkloric traditions and customs (Boycheva &
Marinova, 2017).
B. sempervirens can be a host to other organisms that use it as a substrate on
which they grow (likes the fungus Peniophora proxima Bres.) or feed on parts of
it and cause damage by destroying its tissues and organs, the lepidoptera Cydalima
perspectalis (Walker, 1859).
Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1879) described Peniophora as the first genus of
corticioid fungi based on microscopic features (incrusted cystidia). According to
Andreasen & Hallenberg (2009) it is a member of the section Gloeopeniophora
Höhn. & Litsch. (with P. incarnata-group) which possess ellipsoid to narrow
ellipsoid spores.
P. proxima belongs to the corticoid fungi with restricted range that follows
the spread of B. sempervirens. The species is known only from Buxus, which
makes it easy for determination (Bernicchia & Gorjón, 2010). In addition, it
can be easily recognized by the numerous encrusted cystidia, gloeocystidia and
ellipsoid spores (Lambevska, Rusevska & Karadelev, 2013). P. proxima has
been reported from different parts of Europe, but it has not been previously
reported for Bulgaria.
The box tree moth [Cydalima perspectalis (Walker, 1859) (Lep.: Crambidae)]
is an invasive species of pest, native to Japan, China and Korea, but from 2006 was
introduced accidentally in Europe where it spreads extremely rapidly on ornamen-
tal Buxus communities (Leraut, 2012). The larvae feed on the leaves and shoots and
causes very serious damage. It was registered as new for Europe by Billen (2007)
in Germany, where the species was probably introduced in 2005, while his first
finding in Bulgaria was in 2014 by Beshkov, Abadjiev & Dimitrov (2015) in three
remote locations.
Peniophora proxima Bres., Bull. Soc. Mycol. Fr. 28(4): 402 (1912).
Morphological description. Basidiome resupinate, effused, hymenophore
smooth to tuberculate, reddish-pink, margin loosening from the substrate, hyphal
system monomitic, hyphae with clamps, hyaline, thin-walled, somewhat aggluti-
nated, gloeocystidia cylindrical to fusiform, thin-walled, lamprocystidia numerous,
fusiform, 15-40 x 5-7 μm, basidia up to 50 x 10 µm, with 4-sterigmata, and with a
basal clamp, basidiospores ellipsoid, thin-walled, smooth, 8-14 x 6-7 µm, hyaline
(Fig. 1, A-B).
Ecological remarks and host. It is known to be exclusively found on B.
sempervirens.
General distribution. P. proxima has been reported from different parts of Europe,
Russia, France, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Portugal,
Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Ukraine, Macedonia, Turkey and the
Caucasus (Bernicchia & Gorjón, 2010; Lambevska, Rusevska & Karadelev, 2013).
Distribution in Bulgaria. Sofia region and Central Balkan Range.
Material examined. Sofia Valley, Sofia city, “King Boris’Garden” park, ur-
ban vegetation, old tree on B. sempervirens, N 42.68861° E 23.33953°, 545 m,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Financial support by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science under
the National Research Programme “Young scientists and postdoctoral students”
approved by DCM # 577 /17.08.2018 is gratefully acknowledged.
NOTE:
1. http://www.theplantlist.org/
2. http://www.indexfungorum.org/Names/Names.asp
3. http://www.mycobank.org/
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Peniophoraceae. Synopsis Fungorum, 26, 56-119.
Bernicchia, A. & Gorjón, S.P. (eds.) (2010). Corticiaceae s.l. Fungi Euro-
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Beshkov, S., Abadjiev, S. & Dimitrov, D. (2015). Cydalima perspectalis
(Walker, 1859) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae: Spilomelinae) – new invasive
pest moth in Bulgaria. The Еntomologist's Record and Journal of Varia-
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219
Aneta Lambevska-Hristova, Svetlana Bancheva
Aneta Lambevska-Hristova
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0061-1015
Department of Plant and Fungal Diversity and Resources
Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Svetlana Bancheva
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7365-9971
Department of Plant and Fungal Diversity and Resources
Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
220
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https://doi.org/10.48365/envr-2020.1.20 Biodiversity
INTRODUCTION
The turbot (Scophtalmus maximus L.) is a fish species widely distributed
throughout the European waters, from Northeast Atlantic to the Arctic Circle.
It occurs in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, as well as in the Black Sea. It is
one of the most valuable commercial species in the Black Sea and represents an
endangered fishery resource. Turbot is represented by several local populations
that could be considered independent units of the stock (Daskalov & Ratz, 2011),
and state-of-the-art knowledge of local Black Sea turbot populations is needed for
accurate assessment of general turbot stock.
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P. Ivanova, N. Dzhembekova, I. Atanassov, K. Rusanov, V. Raykov, I. Zlateva, M. Yankova
Statistical analyses
MEGA7 (Kumar et al., 2018) was used to analyze mtDNA sequence data. After
sequence alignment, the number of haplotypes, haplotype connectivity, and TCS
Networks using Popart (Clement et al., 2002) was also constructed. The statistical
robustness in the nodes of the resulting tree was determined by 1000 bootstrap
replicates. Analysis performed by Tajima’s D test (Tajima, 1989) tested the
conformity of DNA sequence evolution to neutrality.
the Azov Sea population, with Hap6 found also in the Mediterranean. Two
haplotypes Hap2 and Hap17 were shared with the Sea of Marmara and the
former one found also in the Aegean (Suzuki et al., 2004). The data received
did not support the Suzuki et al. (2004) opinion about the lack of common
haplotypes between “western” and “eastern” lineages and the existence of two
distinct turbot mitochondrial lineages. At the same time, there are common
haplotypes between north Black Sea populations according to our data and data
provided by Atanassov et al. (2011). The haplotypes of the south Black Sea
populations (Atanassov et al., 2011) were not found in the Shabla population,
which proposed that these markers are enough appropriate for distinguishing
north and south Bulgarian population but could not be used for differentiation
at a global scale as western and eastern lineages.
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Applicability of mtDNA Control Region for Assessment...
The CR datasets with haplotype distribution were star-like (Fig. 1), with a central
predominant haplotype. The star-like topologies are often viewed as evidence of
recent population expansion (Slatkin and Hudson, 1991).
(Table 2). A high level of haplotype diversity in the same region was also reported
for turbot along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast (Atanassov et al., 2011). The reason
for that is that the majority of the identified haplotypes originate from a small set
of dominant haplotypes (Hap 5, 2and 14) following single nucleotide substitution.
CONCLUSION
The mt DNA haplotypes (CR region) found in the Shabla population could be
used for distinguishing of north and south Bulgarian Black Sea turbot populations.
The obtained data can be useful in selecting fish stocks that preserve a better genetic
diversity of S. maximus in conservation and/or hatchery programs.
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Applicability of mtDNA Control Region for Assessment...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been carried out in the framework of the National Science Program
"Environmental Protection and Reduction of Risks of Adverse Events and
Natural Disasters", approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers №
577/17.08.2018 and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (MES)
of Bulgaria (Agreement № D01-230/06.12.2018).
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229
P. Ivanova, N. Dzhembekova, I. Atanassov, K. Rusanov, V. Raykov, I. Zlateva, M. Yankova
Petya Ivanova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7487-9033
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Nina Dzhembekova
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9620-6422
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ivan Atanassov
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-3629
AgroBioInstitute
Agricultural Academy
Sofia, Bulgara
E-mail: [email protected]
Krasimir Rusanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8131-3364
AgroBioInstitute
Agricultural Academy
Sofia, Bulgara
E-mail: [email protected]
Violin Raykov
http://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-4322-6352
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Ivelina Zlateva
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4133-5627
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Maria Yankova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3333-7131
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
GIS tools in general are very costly licensed applications that can support
georeferenced datasets analyses. This is the reason why such applications are
very hard to get in everyday use for volunteer or operational groups activities in
most Bulgarian municipalities. In the last two years our work was focused on GIS
application development, that is based on free data and open source GIS solutions
supporting decision making in cases of wildland fires and flood events. The main
goal was improving accessibility, time response and communication between field
operation teams. The application had to be able to visualize Points of Interest (POIs)
which operational teams on the field need to know during suppression measures.
Such POIs could be logistic centers for water supplies and firefighting tools for
example. All of this information is very good source if the people having the tools
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Stefan Stefanov, Nina Dobrinkova, Emilia Tosheva
know how to operate with georeferenced databases. This was not the case with
most of the volunteer group members in the municipalities we were working with.
Thus, we decided to use Google cloud-based platform called G Suite (G-Suite) for
developing of training application along with the main one. The second tool could
deliver in an easy way an interactive training interesting for the volunteers and
applicable in real time. G Suite is cloud-based and gives the opportunity to be used
on different devices such as smart phones, tablet devices, laptops and etc. Even
after the main training the resource can be used as follow up reference (Tosheva,
2019).
STUDY AREAS
The study areas used as base for development of our application have been
selected based on two different international projects operating in two countries
– Bulgaria and Armenia. The Bulgarian test area is situated on the territory of
Zlatograd forestry department and was focused on forest fires. The flood related
area was selected for Armenia in the catchment of river Voghji – Kapan region.
the level of the river and the reservoir. Snow melt typically lasts from March to
August (Armenian State Hydrometeorological and Monitoring Service officially
used sources).
The surface of the Geghi reservoir is 50 ha and the elevation above sea level
is nearly 1400 m. The height of the dam is 70 m and the length along the crest is
270 m. The total volume of reservoir is 15 million cubic meters, but the effective
volume is about 12 million cubic meters. Nearly 4,300 people would be affected by
in a case of a dam break of the reservoir.
The Geghanoush TSF is located in the gorge of the Geghanoush River, in the
southern part of Kapan (Figure 2). The difference of relative heights between the
tailing dam, on one hand, and city buildings and transport infrastructure, on the
other hand, is 75 meters. In case the reservoir dam is broken due to an earthquake,
the sliding mass could cover industrial and residential buildings, and as a result of
barrage, the polluted water could flood central quarters of the city. The existing
Geghanoush Tailings Repository was designed in early 1960’s and had been operated
between 1962 and 1983, when the Kajaran Tailings Repository at Artsvanik was
commissioned. The Geghanoush tailings repository was re-commissioned in 2006
after the completion of the diversion works and continues to be used today along
with an upstream extension currently under construction. The volume of the tailing
is 5.4 million m3 and the dam height is 21.5 m.
Figure 1. The location of Geghi reservoir. The inset shows its location
within Armenia. Background image: Sentinel-2, RGB composite
(source: American University of Armenia)
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Stefan Stefanov, Nina Dobrinkova, Emilia Tosheva
The Wildland Fire Application has different features that can be used by
firefighting or volunteer groups on the field. It is suitable for operational room
operators too. The module maintains the Geolocation feature which is helpful when
the first arrived team alert the rest of the groups where the problem is. Via the Draw
feature they are able to mark the locations of fires so that they become visualized
and possible to be seen in the operational room. As a result, firefighters can request
help or firefighting tools faster. The Draw feature is able not only to mark signs but
also to depict the fire area with polygons. The Measure and Distance features are
used to measure the distances between the fires and the nearest POI's and also can
determine the areas of the fire zone. The module has the ability of switching the
predefined layers and the base map layers. The base map layers include Street maps,
Satellite maps, Shaded relief maps and NatGeo maps. These can be used mainly
for analysis in the operational rooms. The Pop-Up feature visualizes information
about the number and tools available in the POI’s together with their locations.
The Export feature is able to save the maps with the new data in map-printable
format files. These outcomes can be applied for further analysis. The application
provides detailed information about the current or future weather conditions via
the Openweather platform. In addition, it is connected to the EFFIS emergency
management services, which offer extra satellite data if the fire is big enough to be
captured.
is based on the algorithms for open source GIS build up tools discussed in details
in (Singh & Gambhir, 2012), (Das, Prakash, Sandilya & Subhani, 2014), (García,
Perotto-Baldivieso & Hallett, 2010). The tool is using inputs from DG ECHO funded
project called “Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction (ALTER)”. ALTER is targeting
the establishment of public-private partnerships for prevention of flood risks that may
stem from water and mining dam failures. The project was focused on three pilot
areas where dams and other activities present risks to local communities: the Akhtala
and Teghut areas of Lori Marz along the Shamlugh river, the Vorotan Cascade and its
associated dams in the Syunik region, and the Kapan and Voghji river basin of Syunik
region. The developed GIS application covered only the case of Voghji river basin.
Its capabilities were built upon flood events, caused by different probabilistic waves
in the catchment area of Voghji river. The Flood Event Application has been tested in
Kapan region with a real field test exercise and it was used for the table top education
of the local civil protection teams.
The application has the ability to switch the predefined layers and also the base
map layers. The predefined layers include a variety of information. By turning them
On or Off users can easily analyze the risks in the current situation. The layers can
be downloaded as GeoJSON file. They can easily be located and their opacity can
be changed. The base map layers include Street map, Satellite map, Shaded relief
map and NatGeo map, which can help in operational room analysis.
The Geolocation feature could be used for localization of users via the GPS of
their device or via the network location. The Draw feature is able to mark the zone
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Open Source GIS Decision Support Tools for Wildfire...
TRAINING
The presented open source tools that have been developed for the wildland fires
and the flood events include different features, which are basic GIS skills, but if not
trained, hard to be utilized. Simple and understandable training is needed in order
to facilitate the work with them. To support the learning process, we used some of
the Google G Suite options (G-Suite is open source platform to develop an inter-
active courses). G Suite is a set of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration
tools, software and products. It comprises of Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar for com-
munication, Currents, Drive for storage, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Sites for
productivity and collaboration. To develop our teaching platform, we selected to
use Docs, Slides, Drive and Sites in order to set up the training platform (Tosheva,
2019). Video materials, presentations and documents were included in the web re-
sources of both applications. The training for the Wildland Fire Tool was developed
in Bulgarian language (Figure 5).
It included lessons for different tools that are available in the application.
General orientation how the application works, navigation instruction through the
main menu, getting familiar with layers and how to add a new information were the
main topics in the educational materials. The training set of lessons for the flood
event application were developed in English language (Figure 6).
CONCLUSION
The presented article gave an overview on the way of building open source
web based GIS tools in support of volunteer or civil protection operational teams
from the field. The main ideas how the architecture of the application can be
established is described in details in (Singh & Gambhir, 2012), (Das, Prakash,
Sandilya & Subhani, 2014), (García, Perotto-Baldivieso & Hallett, 2010). The
future use of the platforms can be mainly from volunteer groups, firefighting or
civil protection teams in their decision making on the field or in the operational
rooms (Traneva, Atanassova & Tranev, 2019), (Traneva & Tranev, 2019), (Traneva,
Tranev & Atanasova, 2019). This kind of ICT solutions are essential due to the
growing requirements in efficient actions in the context of wildland fires and flood
monitoring activities. Our tools provide opportunity for delivering critical data and
knowledge in a timely manner to all participants in hazard response operations.
The main goal of the Wildland Fire Application was to deliver information about
fire locations and the available equipment and resources in the nearest Points
of Interest (POIs) – logistic centers for water supplies and firefighting tools. In
this way the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) were able to
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Open Source GIS Decision Support Tools for Wildfire...
meliorate the orientation of the volunteer’s groups on field and the reaction of the
first respondents in operational rooms. The Flood Event Application main goal was
to visualize the most vulnerable areas and buildings in cases of floods. It presented
different scenarios that can be analyzed in operational room in order to support and
improve the reaction and management of the current or future situations of flood
events. The tools have been tested during both projects’ lifetime. They proved to
be suitable for access from everywhere where Internet connection is in place by
different devices like desktop computers, smart phones, tablets and laptops.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper has been supported partially by the Bulgarian National Scientific Fund
project number DFNI DN12/5 “Efficient Stochastic Methods and Algorithms
for Large-Scale Problems” and the National Scientific Program “Environmental
Protection and Risk Reduction Under Adverse Events and Natural Disasters” –
NNP-OS contract number Д01-322/18.12.2019.
REFERENCES
E. Tosheva (2019), Technological model for training students in the cloud
environment, Conference on Information Technology and Development
of Education – ITRO 2019 Zrenjanin, Republic of Serbia, ISBN 978-86-
7672-322-5 (Tosheva, 2019).
H.Singh, D. Gambhir, “An Open Source Approach to Build a Web GIS
Application”, International Journal of Computer Science and Technology
(IJCST), Volume 3, ISSN: 2229-4333, p110 – p112, 2012 (Singh &
Gambhir, 2012).
A. K. Das, P. Prakash, C. Sandilya, S. Subhani, “Development of Web-Based
Application for Generating and Publishing Groundwater Quality Maps
Using RS/GIS Technology and P. Mapper in Sattenapalle, Mandal, Guntur
District, Andhra Pradesh”, In ICT and Critical Infrastructure: Proceedings
of the 48th Annual Convention of Computer Society of India, Vol. 2, 2014,
pp. 679 – 686. (Das, Prakash, Sandilya & Subhani, 2014).
V. G. García, H. L. Perotto-Baldivieso, S. Hallett,“A prototype design for
a Web-GIS disaster support system: The Bolivia Amazon case study”,
2010. ( García, Perotto-Baldivieso & Hallett, 2010).
[Online] Available: https://gsuite.google.com (G-Suite)
Traneva V., Atanassova V., Tranev S. Index matrices as a decision-
making tool for job appointment, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, G.
Nikolov et al. (Eds.): NMA 2018, LNCS 11189, 1 – 9, 2019. https://
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10692-8_19 (Traneva, Atanassova &
Tranev, 2019).
239
Stefan Stefanov, Nina Dobrinkova, Emilia Tosheva
Stefan Stefanov
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6012-533X
Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Nina Dobrinkova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6506-748X
Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Emilia Tosheva
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3409-125X
Technical Faculty
South-West University “Neofit Rilski”
Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
240
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
INTRODUCTION
Long-distance radio communication dates back to the early twentieth century
(1901 or 1902) with Marconi’s experiments on radio communication across the
Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, Heaviside and Kennelly suggested the existence
of an ionized layer in the atmosphere that allowed radio waves to reflect off it. In
the first half of the twentieth century, the work of Appleton and Ginzburg built the
theory of propagation and reflection of radio waves from plasma (Appleton, 1925;
Ginzburg, 1964). This theory is based on Maxwell’s system of equations. The value
of complex dielectric constant is introduced specifically for the electromagnetic
field in plasma (Gadzhev et al., 2011; 2012). This makes it possible to use the laws
of geometric optics, to derive values of the refractive index and to determine the
trajectory of radio waves in the ionosphere (Rawer, 2013).
METHOD
The task for the calculation of radio paths contains the determination of the fre-
quency range at which a radio communication at a given distance between the two
241
Rumiana Bojilova, Plamen Mukhtarov
radio communication points can take place. The frequency range is limited by the
minimum and maximum usable frequencies (LUF and MUF respectively), which
depend on the distance of the radio communication and the state of the ionosphere
at the respective time.
To solve this problem, the altitude profile of the electron concentration up to the
ionospheric maximum in the reflection area of radio waves (it is the middle of the
radio path) has to be known. The calculation methodology is based on the theory of
radio wave propagation without taking into account the influence of Earth’s mag-
netic field. We note that this simplification does not reduce the accuracy of the cal-
culation. Upon entering the ionosphere, radio waves suffer the so-called magnetic-
ion splitting, i.e. they break up into two separate waves that propagate at different
speeds. Traditionally, the data from the ionograms take into account ionospheric
characteristics (e.g. critical frequencies) of the reflections of the ordinary wave.
The propagation of an ordinary wave is not affected by the presence of the Earth’s
magnetic field.
The following theorems of the vertical propagation of an ordinary wave in an
ionized layer prove to be sufficient for the calculation of LUF and MUF.
The formula (1) represents the dependence of the virtual height of reflection on
the height profile of the electron concentration N(z) in 1/cm2, where z is the height
above the Earth in km, and the frequency of the radio signal f in MHz.
z0
dz
f
hvert N z
0
1 80.8
f2 (1)
N z0
80.8 1
f2
h' f ob AC hvert
'
f vert sec0
f ob f vert sec0
(2)
242
Methodology for Calculating the Parameters of Radio...
The secant theorem shown in the formula (2) reflects the following regularity.
An oblique ray with a frequency fob incident on the ionosphere at an angle j0 is
reflected by the ionosphere at the same height as a vertical ray with a frequency fvert.
The shown in Figure1 geometry contains a triangle with vertices at the two
endpoints of the radio path (points A and B) and the upper part of the virtual
reflection height h’vert (point C) located in the middle of the path of the oblique
frequency fob. The frequency of the oblique ray is equal to the frequency of the
vertical ray multiplied by the secant of the angle j0, which is determined by the
following formula (3), following the geometry shown in Figure1 (right plot).
a sin (3)
tg0 '
h
vert a1 cos
Where a is the radius of the Earth (about 6370 km), the angle q is half of the
central angle between the two endpoints of the radio path. If the length of the radio
path on the Earth’s surface is denoted by r, as in the Figure 1 (right plot), then its
angle q in radians can be calculated by formula (4):
r
rad (4)
2a
The procedure for calculating the radio path begins with the synthesis of a model
electron density profile based on the predicted critical frequencies foF2, MUF3000
and foE. The used model, called by the names of its creators, is the profile of Di
Giovanni - Radicella (Di Giovanni & Radicella, 1990).
243
Rumiana Bojilova, Plamen Mukhtarov
h hmE ;
h h
N h N mE sec h 2 mE
2 BEb
h hmE ;
h h h hmE (5)
N h N mE N mF sec h 2 mF 2 mE sec h 2
2 B F B Et
N mF 2 N mE sec h 2 hmF 2 hmE sec h 2 h hmF 2
2B B
Et F
f oE 0;
h h (6)
N h N mF 2 sec h 2 mF 2
B
f
This model is based on the representation of the electron density profile with
hyperbolic secant functions (Stankov et al., 2003). The values of the three critical
frequencies are sufficient to calculate the model electron density profile for heights
up to the height of the F-region maximum; the latter is calculated by the given
below formulas (7). The maximum electron concentration of the E and F- layers are
determined directly by the critical frequencies.
The height of the E-layer maximum is assumed to be fixed 120 km. The model
uses the empirically determined by Dudeney & Kressman (1986) dependence
of the height of the F2-layer maximum hmF2 on the parameter, the ratio foF2/
foE and the correction value Dm according to the given below formulas (8).
The parameter Bf, related to the half-thickness of the ionospheric F- layer, is
expressed by an empirical dependence of the derivative of the electron profile
dN/dh, which in turn is expressed by the values of foF2 and M3000F2. The
half-thicknesses of the E- layer (BEb-below and BEt-above the maximum of the
E-region) take fixed values.
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Methodology for Calculating the Parameters of Radio...
N mE cm2 1.24.10 4 foE2 MHz
N mF 2 cm 2
1.24.10 4
foF22 MHz
MUF 3000
M 3000 F 2 (7)
foF 2
foF 2 2
B f 0.04774 .1011
dN
dh
0.0196 M 3000 F 22 1
M f M 3000 F 2
1.2967 M 3000 F 22 1
dN
dh
1.10 9 exp 3.467 0.857 lg foF22 2.02 lg M 3000 F 2
foE 0; Dm 0;
foF 2 foF 2
1.807 ; Dm 0.725 1.725
foE foE
(8)
0.253
Dm 0.012
foF 2
1.215
foE
After calculating the model ionogram, which represents the function h’vert(fvert),
i.e. the dependence of the virtual height on the frequency of the vertically
propagating radio waves, then the calculation of the model oblique ionograms at a
given distance of the radio communication (or the coordinates of the two endpoints
of the radio path) according to the formulas above can be obtained.
400 500
400
300
300
Height [km]
Height [km]
200
200
100
100
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Plasma frequency [MHz] Frequency [MHz]
Figure 2. An example model of the electron density profile in daily conditions
(left panel) and the relevant model ionogram (right panel).
The results for distances respectively 0-100 km, 250 km и 500 km are shown
in Figure 3.
It can be assumed that for radio distances of up to 100 km, with sufficient
accuracy for practice, the reflection of the radio waves is close to the vertical
propagation. At longer distances, it is possible certain frequencies to reflect from
the E and F regions. Traditionally, stable radio communications take place at
reflections in F- region. Reflections from E region are accompanied by large
absorption of radio wave energy due to reflection from a region with a high
neutral air concentration.
The presented in Figure 3 oblique ionograms for given distances define the
limits of the frequency range for radio waves reflecting from the F region at the
respective distances.
246
Methodology for Calculating the Parameters of Radio...
500
Oblique propagation
Distance 0-100 km
250 km
500 km
400
Virtual height [km]
300
200
100
0 2 4 6 8
Frequency [MHz]
CONCLUSION
The methodology proposed in the present paper is intended for servicing users
who carry out long-distance radio communications, as radio amateurs and gov-
ernment organizations. The methodology is suitable for organizing automatic data
processing. In order to make a forecast for the propagation of radio waves at a
given hour of the day, only three ionospheric characteristics are needed: foE, foF2
and MUF3000, which values can be obtained from both direct measurements and
forecasting models (Pancheva & Mukhtarov, 1996, 1998).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present work is supported by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science
under the National Research Programme “Young scientists and postdoctoral
students” approved by DCM № 577/ 17.08.2018. The presentation of the
results is financed by Contract No D01-282/17.12.2019 - Project “National
Geoinformation Center (NGIC)” funded by the National Roadmap for Scientific
Infrastructure 2017-2023 of Bulgaria.
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Rumiana Bojilova, Plamen Mukhtarov
REFERENCES
Appleton, E. V., (1925), Geophysical influences on the transmission of wireless
waves, Proc. Phys. Soc., 37, 16D.
Gadzhev G., Syrakov, D., Ganev, K., Brandiyska, A., Miloshev, N., Georgiev, G.,
Prodanova, M., (2011), Atmospheric composition of the Balkan region and
Bulgaria. Study of the contribution of biogenic emissions, AIP Conference
Proceedings, 1404, pp. 200-209. DOI: 10.1063/1.3659921
Gadzhev G., Ganev, K., Syrakov, D., Miloshev, N., Prodanova, M. (2012)
Contribution of biogenic emissions to the atmospheric composition of the
Balkan Region and Bulgaria. International Journal of Environment and
Pollution, 50 (1-4), pp. 130-139. DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2012.051187
Ginzburg, V. L., (1964), Propagation of Electromagnetic Waves in Plasmas,
Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Di Giovanni, G., & Radicella, S. M. (1990). An analytical model of the electron
density profile in the ionosphere. Advances in Space Research, 10(11), 27-30.
Dudeney, J. R., & Kressman, R. I. (1986). Empirical models of the electron
concentration of the ionosphere and their value for radio communications
purposes. Radio Science, 21(3), 319-330.
Pancheva, D. V., & Mukhtarov, P. Y. (1996). A single-station spectral model of
the monthly median F-region critical frequency. Annals of Geophysics, 39(4).
Pancheva, D., & Mukhtarov, P. (1998). A single-station spectral model of the
monthly median foF2 and M (3000) F2. Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica,
42(2), 183-196.
Rawer, K. (2013). Wave propagation in the ionosphere (Vol. 5). Springer Sci-
ence & Business Media.
Stankov, S. M., Jakowski, N., Heise, S., Muhtarov, P., Kutiev, I., & Warnant,
R. (2003). A new method for reconstruction of the vertical electron density
distribution in the upper ionosphere and plasmasphere. Journal of Geophysi-
cal Research: Space Physics, 108(A5).
Rumiana Bojilova
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Plamen Mukhtarov
National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
248
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract. Today it has become both the government and citizens concern
to care human beings against ever-increasing crisis around the globe. There
are so many natural disasters like: forest fire incidents, earthquakes, floods,
eruptions, tsunami and etc. despite all this kinds of natural and man- made
disasters from a social perspective, it their potentiality to seriously and
irreversible damage regions. In addition the extent and severity of such
incidents may significantly affect the population. For that reason and the
fact that Geographic information system is recognized as a useful system
for alleviation the risk during the crisis management we develop the idea
to promote a new model to have a practical and applicable method of GIS
adoption within the crisis management in order to save as many lives as it can
be done. This study aims to come out with a model that will not allow drop
links. Each smart phone will have application in the event of natural disaster
and it switched due to the change of the vital function of man in trouble. This
will help departments respond as soon as they can and save lives as many as
they can and to reduce the percentage of people who could not call for help.
This work highlights the design challenges and required technical innovations
towards the goal of making GIS much more useful.
Keywords: GIS, disaster, crisis management, rescue, emergency response.
INTRODUCTION
The risks posed by climate change are real and its impacts are already taking
place. The UN estimates that all but one of its emergency appeals for humanitarian
aid in 2007 were climate related. Climate change is best viewed as a threat
multiplier which exacerbates existing trends, tensions and instability. The core
challenge is that climate change threatens to overburden states and regions which
are already fragile and conflict prone. The effects of climate change are being felt
now: temperatures are rising, icecaps and glaciers are melting and extreme weather
249
Aleksandar Petrovski, Nenad Taneski, Jugoslav Ackoski
events are becoming more frequent and more intense1). The following section
outlines some of the forms of conflicts driven by climate change which may occur
in different regions of the world. Some impacts from increasing temperatures are
already happening: Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s pole. Sea
levels are rising faster over the last century. Precipitation (rain and snowfall)
has increased across the globe, on average. Other effects could happen later
this century, if warming continues. Sea levels are expected to rise between 7
and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued
melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger. Floods and droughts
will become more common. Some diseases will spread such as malaria carried
by mosquito. Forest fires will became everyday situation, because of the rising
temperatures caused by climate changes and will be real danger in every place
on the earth, which will increase people movement in northern countries. This is
a huge problem for all of us, and if we don’t use all our technological resources
and knowledge to small the effects of climate changes and to put all investments
in prevention and reduction on it.
The system must comply with the objectives, functions and powers of the
territorial bodies of executive authorities and departments of the countries, in the
field of prevention, combating and elimination of criminal crises, terrorism, natural
and manmade, anti-terrorist and anti-criminal protection, safety and security.
Creating a system should be comprehensive interdepartmental aimed at improving
information technology and information and communication infrastructure of
public administration in general. To create a comprehensive system is to ensure the
safety of protection by reducing the probability of threats of natural, man-made,
criminal, terrorist and other situations due to:
– Effective monitoring of the current situation and providing information for the
authorities;
– Providing information about the current state of security facilities, protection
services and operational headquarters;
– Providing analysis and management of the threats, natural, man-made,
criminal, terrorist and other character crisis;
With an integrated system must be provided:
– Development of technical regulations (conditions) to equip the objects of
protection (and their components) technical means of security and control, as well
as the functioning of the monitoring tools and equipment (systems).
– The ability to monitor the status of security protection objects (their elements),
as well as the movement of persons and transport facilities for protection;
– Automation of the process of collecting and transmitting information to the
monitoring objects of protection (their elements);
– The possibility of collecting and transmitting information from existing and
emerging security products to protect and control objects;
– The possibility of collecting and transmitting information to the services of
territorial bodies;
– The possibility of sharing information between services (including situational
centers) with the task of ensuring human safety both on a bilateral and multilateral basis;
Must be implemented automated control mechanisms, information analysis
monitoring, forecasting situations. Integrated system it will be based on
geographically distributed principle and will be consisting of a single point of
management, transport network, as well as places of gathering, processing and
analysis of information.
The whole system it will consists of four phases.
• Phase one: Software that helps in locating, guiding and directing the people;
• Phase two: Flying drones that search and detect disasters and people;
• Phase three: Specialized machines for helping people;
• Phase four: human resources or specialized people working on field.
1st phase: Is to create a GIS software that will detect the crisis situation or disaster
and to classify it. (What sort of disaster (crisis situation) and the proportions of it).
251
Aleksandar Petrovski, Nenad Taneski, Jugoslav Ackoski
Then it will be created an appropriate application for all types of smart phones,
for all types of operating systems (Android, IOS, Microsoft ....). The application it
will have access to the location of the smart phone, calls, messages, emails and the
phone contacts. This will allow locating phones in crisis areas and access to vital
content on the phone (name of the user, numbers of the closest or most used phone
calls), for those phones that are turned on (operational)2).
The application will consist of three main functions / tools:
• Prevention or procedures and actions what to do before the disaster,
• Instructions what to be done during the crisis and
• Instructions after the crisis, how to take un appropriate measures and procedures.
1. The first function of the application will inform the users about the possible
natural disaster, what to do and how to do it. Directions on how to protect provide
or avoid possible situation (flood, forest fire, tsunamis, NHB pollution ...). It will
inform the consumers where to head, with the appropriate address, phone numbers
and how to reach the place with a particular map.
2. The second function it will be based on the morale and stability during the
disaster. How the users to remain calm and not to panic, but to think realistically
and rationally. Of course, the application will have all the previous functions,
where, how and what to do. The most useful part in this phase is that every person
can send real time SMS to crises centre with useful geo-data information that will
help to people on the ground about them and their condition.
3. The third tool will consist of basic survival manuals with pictures. And
measures where people to go and how to reach the most basic needs.
For all non-smart phones and cell phones that don’t have GPS, this will also be
possible. It can still be tracked. This is because a cell phone is basically an advanced
two way radio in which communication are made via cell towers. These cell towers
are within a network of cell towers which its main function is send and receive the
radio signals emitting from your phone. And cell phone is basically transmitting
radio signal to the nearest cell tower. The closer your phone to a cell tower, the
stronger the signal that is emitted. So, by measuring the signal strength and also
through triangulation method with other cell tower; that is by measuring how
strong or weak signal emitted by your phone, your phone location can be pinpointed
almost accurately. However, there are some disadvantages to this technique as big
buildings or trees can affect the signal and therefore affect the signal strength. All
users of these phones will receive un SMS and MMS with instructions.
2ndphase: The second phase will be consisting of a series of little flying drones
which it will be equipped with a various sensors and cameras (video live stream,
thermal scanning, structural laser scanning, Wi-Fi hotspots servers, signal scanner
and receiver). Sensors for identifying the crisis and sensors for tracking and
founding people. All flying drones will be communicating with one HQ that will
control the drones.
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GIS in Crises Management Use of Smart Phone...
3rdphase will be for those who cannot reach the emergency centers and basic
needs. On them will be sent help from ground and air with adequate machines
(robots and drones) in the form of food, water, first aid and medicinе. The machines
will choose where to go alone and where to deliver the packages.
4thphase will consist of specialized teams for different kind of disasters and
teams dedicated for managing crisis situations. Every team will be equipped with
equipment and tools for dealing with every situation on field and in every HQ. This
phase will have an option of including the Army of the country that has a crisis
situation or every available people.
ALGORITHM
Steps of the algorithm:
First: for all our team members we are checking the visibility to the goal by our
GIS connected by UAV orvoice communication.
Second for team member that have visibility we measure the distance to the victim.
Third we get the information for weather conditionsfrom nearby weather stations
or our meteoritical data.
Fourth from the appropriate tables we get the appropriate probabilities to save
the victim.
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GIS in Crises Management Use of Smart Phone...
Fifth (and finally) the team member with the biggest probability to save the
victim gets an order to save the man in trouble.
255
Aleksandar Petrovski, Nenad Taneski, Jugoslav Ackoski
On the this picture we have example of one possible situation on the field. Our
three (blue circle) and one man in trouble (red circle) team members are at the
positions.
ALGORITHM WORKFLOW
First: From the ground situation team member with number 1 and 3 have
visibility to the goal.
Second: The distance from team member with number 1 to the victim is 600 m
and the distance from team member 3 to the victim is 800m.
Third: The team member from the field reports us that the weather is sunny, and
we are checking weather condition on android application.
Fourth: From the tables, we can see that probability for team member with
number 1 is 0,93 and 0,89 for team member with number 3. This calculating will be
automatically done by the application in our TOC center.
Fifth: Algorithm gives us final result that team member with number 1 is most
suited to finish the task.
Six: The commanding centar gives the executive order.
CONCLUSION
This integrated system should allow:
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GIS in Crises Management Use of Smart Phone...
NOTES
1. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-
warming;
2. http://myphonelocater.com/category/triangulation;
3. Disaster Recovery Plan Strategies and Processes February 2002 pp 11-12.
REFERENCES
Charles M. Grinstead, J. Laurie Snell. Introduction to Probability. 520.
257
Aleksandar Petrovski, Nenad Taneski, Jugoslav Ackoski
Nenad Taneski
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6471-0189
University “Goce Delchev” Shtip
Military Academy “General Mihailo Apostolski”
Vasko Karangjeleski bb
Skopje, North Macedonia
E-mail: [email protected]
Jugoslav Ackoski
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2782-3739
University “Goce Delchev” Shtip
Military Academy “General Mihailo Apostolski”
Vasko Karangjeleski bb
Skopje, North Macedonia
E-mail: [email protected]
258
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: Wildland fires are natural hazard that occur every year in different
parts of the world. European Mediterranean countries often are suffering from this
disaster and in some cases human casualties plus infrastructure damages are in
place. Bulgaria as part of the north east Mediterranean basin is affected by wildland
fires in the last three decades more often than before. In our article we will present
a framework for wildfire danger prediction system by usage of wireless sensor
networks collecting real data and elaborating it into alerts. The test area is located
on the territory of South-West state-owned forestry district. The described approach
is based on the national fire danger rating algorithm, but in our case downscaled to
daily prognosis. The system is under construction at the time of the paper writing
thus the framework of the system main functionalities is the main scope of the
article.
Keywords: wildfire, fire danger, sensor network.
INTRODUCTION
Wildland fires are becoming a global threat in the last decades worldwide. They
are damaging forests and every economy sphere connected to the forestry products.
As a result, after wildland fire vast amounts of valuable timber is lost. Other direct
negative impacts are disruption and degradation of forest plantations, deforestation
of big areas, deterioration of the protective functions of forests, reduction of the
forest ecosystem water protection role, increasement of soil erosion, especially in
mountain areas with steep slopes. Agricultural conditions become less productive
in zones after fires. Animals, people, industrial buildings and housing, critical
infrastructure, other important facilities are endangered if they are affected directly
or indirectly by firestorms.
Since the middle of the last century, the problem of wildland fires gets a critical
dimension due more often and more dangerous scale of the fire behaviour. This
problem mostly affected large forest areas in the USA, Canada, Australia, Russia
and Southern Europe countries. Substantial human, financial, material and scientific
259
Nina Dobrinkova, Maria Asenova
resources are allocated for finding a solution of the above problems associated with
the adverse effects of forest fires and finding a solution for them at national, regional
and international level. With this regard significant funds are allocated also in EU
programs for wildland fire protection of the Union’s forests. Main objectives of the
resource provision programs are measures for fire protection with reduction of the
number and size of the burnt areas.
and 2007. The last peak for the period occurs after 5 years — in 2012.The values of
peaks (maximum levels) for 1993, 2000, 2007 and 2012 exceed the average value
for the period for the number of fires occurred respectively 2,21; 3,18; 2,75 and
1,63 times more (Figure 1).
Figure 2 shows the dynamics of magnitude of burnt areas for the same period
(1990 – 2013). The chart clearly shows the large unevenness and direct relation of
this magnitude with the data about the number of fires occurred (Fig. 1). For the
peak years of the fire ocurence — 1993, 2000, 2007 and 2012 the size of burnt area
exceeds the average for the period respectively 1,86; 5,87; 4,39 and 1,3 times more.
The analysis of fire activity and forest fire risk in the Bulgarian forest areas
evaluated by (Lyubenov, 2016) was proved to be constant, with dynamic character
and peaks on every 5 to 7 years.
developed at the same time. Table 1 shows the results for “fire risk level” by RFD
based on (Lyubenov-Panov, 2000) for 9 years of the analysed period.
Table 3 represents the summarized fire danger data in forest areas of the
country of Bulgaria according to the second proposed methodology by (Lyubenov-
Konstantinov, 2008) and its following relevant estimates for the 18 years period.
After these two attempts for establishment of common methodology for fire
danger level in Bulgaria general conclusion was made that the dynamic values in
the estimations are very dependent on the period that is determined for evaluation.
In 2016 has been done a third version of the Methodology determining forest
fire risk in Bulgaria by (Lyubenov, 2016). The basic inputs that he used for his
estimations were:
Table 4. Determining the degree of forest fire risk (based on (Lyubenov, 2016))
Values of the integrated indicator Rf.risk Degree of forest fire risk
Rf.risk ≤ 0,1 Low (green)
Rf.risk > 0,1 и ≤ 0,3 Medium (yellow)
Rf.risk > 0,3 High (red)
The Canadian system attempts to unite the three individual components of the
overall forest fire danger in one indicator (constant fire danger, dynamic fire danger
and fire risk). This system works only in Canada and is recommended for use in
the Russian boreal forests (Sofonov, 2005). The FWI module determining only
dynamic fire danger is used by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of EC to predict the
dynamic fire danger (according to weather conditions) for all countries using the
European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
In USA the national Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) is established for the needs
of the USA Forest Department. According to this system forest areas of USA from Alaska
to Florida are divided in four groups by types of flammable materials: grasslands, bushes,
wooded and lands occupied by clearing residues. Additionally, the system requires
division of combustible materials in 20 separate types. Separate combustible model is
developed for each type serving as basis for defining the fire danger level. This system is
in limited use in New Zealand and South African Republics (Sofonov, 2005).
In France based on (Lyubenov, 2016) for the most fire dangerous French
region — Mediterranean, has been adopted methodology for determining the risk
measure named “average annual risk” (AR, %) based on statistical data for certain
period of years. This methodology also attempts to combine both indicators for
fire activity assessment in the given region — percentage of burnt area for the
period and likelihood of fire occurrence in the same area expressed in years. Such
approach and evaluation for determining the “forest fire risk level” is not applicable
for Bulgaria. Such values in percentage of burnt forest area annually for a region
can not be reached in other countries and regions. Furthermore, this methodology
does not take into account important measurable indicator as the number of fires
occurred averagely per year or for the reported period.
In Russia has been consistently worked on the issue of classification of forest
areas by “fire danger level”. A scale for determining the so-called “real combustibility
of forests” (Lomov, 2007) was developed and validated for Russia. The Russian
approach complies the general requirements for classification of forest areas by
“forest fire risk”. However, its direct application in Bulgaria is not possible, given
the scales of regions and field work done for the Russian Federation forestry zones.
A newer methodology and scale including integrated indicator associated with both
265
Nina Dobrinkova, Maria Asenova
the number of fires and burnt average annual area for a given forest area (Sofronov,
2005) is proposed in Russia to the current date, which will increase the accuracy
of the assessment of “real combustibility of forests”. Although more precise this
scale with the integrated indicator “aggregate perimeter” is likely to be used for
plain terrains where in equal other conditions the shape of burnt area is relatively
correct, approaching circular one. For oblique, steep and rugged terrain the shape is
extremely complex and this classification is difficult to be applied.
In Germany the fire activity assessment is determined in “fire danger classes”
by evaluating different forestry units (Misbach, 1989). This approach is applied in
the former German Democratic Republic (east German provinces) where forest fire
activity recently is increasing.
This methodology divides forestry in four fire danger classes:
1. Fire danger class A1: forests where three or more fires have occurred per
year, with sizes of burnt area larger than 100 ha and with more than 50 ha burnt
area per 100 000 ha forest land.
2. Fire danger class A: forests with over 50 ha completely burnt area per 100
000 ha per year.
3. Fire danger class B: forests with completely burnt area of 5 to 50 ha per 100
000 ha per year.
4. Fire danger class C: forests with less than 5 ha completely burnt area per 100
000 ha per year.
The first attempt for classification of forest fire risk areas in EU is for the Southern
European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Greece). That study has been
launched with a pilot project for creation of an forest fire information system using
the database for the period 1989 – 1993 described in details in (Regulation (EES)
№ 2158/92). For areas with high fire risk are considered those where 4,000 or more
fires occur averagely per year. The number of fires may also be smaller, but if the
average size per fire exceeds 30 hectares the risk remains high again. As high-risk
under these conditions are classified only areas in Portugal, Spain and Greece plus
7 regions in France and 11 in Italy defined in (Regulation (EEC) No 2158/92). In
1997, the European Commission established a working group for development and
proposal of methods for forest fire risk assessment and evaluation of burnt areas
in the European Union discussed in details in (Forest Fires in Europe: Report №
11/2010). This group is part of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of
the European Commission and is part of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra.
The work of this group ends with the development of the European Forest Fire
Information System (EFFIS) launched in 2000. This system was approved by the
European Council and European Parliament with Regulation (EC) No 2152/2003
(Forest Focus) as a tool for monitoring of forests and environment.
266
Framework for Wildfire Danger Prediction System
On 23.02.2005 was held the third meeting of the Working Group on forest fires,
which initiated a discussion called: “Key proposals to EU 25 for the classification
of forests by fire risk”. The concept of “fire risk” and components included therein
was introduced for the first time at that meeting and since than every EU member
state is obligate to provide information for its forest fire risk zones. However there
is still lack within the European Union of a unified methodology for determining
the classes (degree) of fire risk or forest fire risk. Because of that reason is required
each EU Member State to develop its own methodology to classify their forest areas
by forest fire risk and monitor them with state specific systems and technologies.
Figure 4. The test case sensor network in the zone of south-west forestry district
of Bulgaria located nearby Kresna Gorge.
The second phase where is planned to be the instalments with tests is still in its
beginning. It will cover the system architecture development in practice (figure 5).
The system main three components are Fire Weather Observation, Fuel Moisture
and Fire Behaviour. This modules are based on the Canadian Fire Danger Rating
System and are discussed in details in (Bagheri 2007) and (Groot, 1998). Our
main goal is to build up the physical network and develop the software collecting
the sensor data, elaborating it into alerts and presenting it into daily maps that in
cases of potential fire occurrence will transmit automatically alerts to predefined
stakeholders.
268
Framework for Wildfire Danger Prediction System
CONCLUSIONS
The proposed framework for a sensor network with the capacity of fire danger
rating and early identification of starting forest fire is something that has not been
done so far in Bulgaria. In the last seven years Firewatch towers have been placed
in vulnerable areas, however this technology is very expensive and after the end
of the project that funded its building the hardware maintenance is gone. This led
to the situation that facilities with average price 300 000 euro each start to fail
doing its job and eventually stop working. Our approach is aiming to provide low
cost, but effective tool for everyday use and alerting system that can be reliable to
capture fire danger and the initial source of fire start.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported by the NNP-OS contract number Д01-322/18.12.2019
and the Bulgarian National Scientific Fund project number DFNI DN12/5
“Efficient Stochastic Methods and Algorithms for Large-Scale Problems”.
269
Nina Dobrinkova, Maria Asenova
REFERENCES
Lyubenov, K. 2016. “Methodology for determining the risk of forest fires
on the territory of the country of Bulgaria” for the needs of measure 8
"Investments in forest areas - development and improvement of forest
viability" of the funding period (2014 - 2020). (in Bulgarian)
Lyubenov, K., P. Panov. Forest fires in Bulgaria (1991 – 2000). Forester
Ideas journal, No. 2/2000.
Lyubenov, K., Vl. Konstantinov. Analysis and evaluation of fires and forest
fire danger. Forester Ideas journal, No. 1-2/2008
Sofonov, M.A., I.G. Holldammer et al. Fire danger in natural conditions.
Krasnoyarsk, 2005 (book).
Lomov, V.D., S.N. Volkov Easy Pyrology Moscow, 2007 (book).
Karl Misbach. Forest fires. Sofia, 1989 (book)
Forest Fire in the South of the European Union (Regulation (EES) №
2158/92). Brussels, 1996
Council (Regulation (EEC) No 2158/92) on protection of the Community’s
forests against fire OJ No. L 217, 31.07.1992.
Lee, S.-J., Gerla, M., & Toh, C.-K. (1999). A simulation study of table-
driven and on-demand routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks.
Network, IEEE, 13 (4), 48-54.
Bagheri, M. (2007). Efficient K-Coverage Algorithms for Wireless Sensor
Networks and Their Applications to Early Detection of Forest Fires.
Computing Science, SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY. MSc: 75.
Groot., W. J. (1998). Interpreting the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index
(FWI) System. In Proc. of the Fourth Central Region Fire Weather
Committee Scientific and Technical Seminar, Edmonton, Canada.
Nina Dobrinkova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6506-748X
Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mil: [email protected]
Maria Asenova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9660-0275
Department of Forest Management
Faculty of Forestry
University of Forestry
Sofia, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
270
Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: Ocean color remote sensing has entered a new era with the successful
launch of the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) on board Copernicus
Sentinel-3 satellites. The representativeness and accuracy of the OLCI geophysical
products are poorly quantified in the Black Sea which is featured by high bio-
optical complexity. This paper addresses the evaluation of the OLCI/3A sensor's
performance for retrieving ocean color products of the western Black Sea waters,
by carrying out qualitative and quantitative match-up analysis between in situ
and OLCI data. Results indicate a systematic underestimate of the water-leaving
radiances (more pronounced at 412 and 665 nm) in contrary to the OLCI standard
Chlorophyll (CHL) products which significantly overestimate the in situ records.
These findings confirm the need of consistent reference in situ bio-optical data with
improved spatial and temporal coverage for further satellite ocean color missions
calibration and validation activities in the Black Sea.
Keywords: OLCI, ocean color, Black Sea, validation
INTRODUCTION
The Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) on board the Sentinel-3
satellites as a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and EC initiative for Earth
observations – Copernicus has been designed to provide continuous global and
regional observations of the land and ocean surface at high accuracy allowing
operational monitoring of environmental parameters and climate studies. Of partic-
ular interest are the ocean colour measurements related to coastal zone monitoring
in order to support environmental assessment of water quality and risk phenomena
(such as harmful algal blooms) and to improve management of coastal habitats
(EUMETSAT, 2018а). The OLCI sensor is a follow up of Medium Resolution
Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) on board the ESA/ENVISAT platform (Don-
lon et al.,2012). It incorporates several significant technological improvements
comparing to MERIS including a) increased number of spectral bands from 15 to
21, b) reduction of sun glint effects, c) better global coverage, d) improved spatial
271
Violeta Slabakova, Snejana Moncheva, Natalyia Slabakova, Nina Dzhembekova
developed at the JRC (D'Alimonte et al., 2002). The processing steps, defined in
agreement with consolidated protocols are documented in Zibordi et al., 2011.
CHL was determined by filtering the water samples through Whatman GF/F glass
microfibre filters (pore size 0.7μm, diameter 47 mm), extracting the pigments with
acetone (90%) and spectrophotometrically measuring absorption at wavelengths of
480 630,645, 663, 664, 665nm and 750 nm (Edler, 1799). The values of CHL were
calculated with the trichromatic equations (Jeffrey & G. Humphrey, 1975).
LWN from the Galata AERONET–OC site for the period April 2016 - August 2019
were obtained from AERONET Ocean Color web site. The match-up analyses were
based on fully quality controlled AERONET-OC Level 2.0 radiometric products
determined at different center wavelengths λ in the 412–1020 nm spectral region
(Zibordi et al., 2009).
Satellite data
Match-ups for the in situ data were constructed using Sentinel-3 OLCI Level-2
(L2) data with 300 m spatial resolution, mode “Non Time Critical” (NTC),
Processing Baseline 2.23 (EUMETSAT, 2018a, 2018b) for the period 26 April 2016
273
Violeta Slabakova, Snejana Moncheva, Natalyia Slabakova, Nina Dzhembekova
– 29 November 2017 over the western Black Sea obtained from Copernicus Online
Data Access Reprocessed archive (CODAREP). The operational OLCI L2, Full
Resolution (FR) mode “NTC” data from 30 November 2017 to August 2019 for
the same geographic domain were downloaded from the EUMETSAT Data Centre.
The OLCI spectral reflectance data ρw were converted to normalized water-
leaving radiance LWN according to:
(1)
Match-Up Construction
The match-up constructions were obtained from arithmetic average of valid
OLCI full-resolution data calculated over the box of 3 × 3 – image elements
centered on the measurements location. These OLCI averages were discarded
when data: 1) were affected by the main OLCI standard flags (EUMETSAT, 2018a)
with exception of ANNOT flags (Zibordi et al., 2018); 2) sensor and sun zenith
angles were greater than 60° and < 70°, respectively; 3) the time window between
in situ measurements and satellite overpass were higher than ± 3 h; and 4) the
coefficients of variation of all 9 pixels within the box were higher than 0.2. Finally,
the percentage of valid pixels in each box was checked, and when this percentage
was not less than 50%, the mean values of the valid pixels in the box was calculated
and compared to the in situ data.
Statistical Method
OLCI L2 ocean color products were evaluated by standard statistics - coefficient
of determination R2, root-mean-square error (RMSE), Mean Percentage Difference
(MPD), Mean Absolute Percentage Difference (MAPD). The log_RMSE was used
for the assessment of OLCI pigment concentrations because of lognormal natural
distribution of CHL (Campbell, 1995).
water-leaving radiances, with exception of OLCI LWN data in the blue spectral band
(412 nm), where negative values frequently occurred (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. (Left) in situ LWN and (Right) OLCI LWN spectra for the Galata
match-ups. The red continuous lines indicate the spectral averages
and the red dashed lines indicate ± one standard deviation.
The spectra of Galata and OLCI radiance data showed extremely high LWN
(λ) values for both data sets in June 2017 (Fig. 2). The phytoplankton samples
collected on 23.05.2017 in the area around Galata platform confirmed the presence
of coccolithophore Emiliana huxleyi with abundance of 2 265 120 cells/l during the
initial phase of the bloom. The full development of the bloom during late spring of
2017 in the Black Sea is clearly visible in the OLCI RGB images (Fig. 3).
In general there was a good correlation between OLCI LWN and Galata records for
all the wavelengths (Fig 4. Tab.1). The coefficient of determination R2 varies from
0.84 at 665 nm to 0.98 at 490 and 560 nm, indicating that most of the OLCI data
275
Violeta Slabakova, Snejana Moncheva, Natalyia Slabakova, Nina Dzhembekova
products appear to agree with the in situ data. Still, a significant number of OLCI
negative LWN values were observed at 412 and 665 nm. This indicates that OLCI
LWN data are likely underestimated. The highest RMSE of 0.37 mW cm−2μm−1sr−1 is
determined for LWN at 412 nm that considerably decreases to 0.07 for LWN at 665 nm,
in agreement with the lower LWN values. The lower MPD of -10.63% and -11.20%
were estimated at 490 and 560 nm, respectively.
The comparison of in-water radiometric LWN (λ) and satellite LWN spectra was
performed for the bands for which in situ data exist (i.e. those identified by the
276
Evaluation of Sentinel-3A OLCI Ocean Color Products...
center wavelengths at 412, 443, 490, 510, 560, and 665 nm). The total number of
matchup pairs was 13. The OLCI estimates displayed systematic negative errors
(Tab.2), thus, an underestimation of LWN (λ) showed up at 412, 443, 490, 560 and
665 nm compared to sea-truth data. The positive MPD was found only for 510 nm.
The highest underestimate of about -32% was measured at 665 nm while the lowest
(bellow 5%) occurred at 443, 490 and 560 nm. Relatively low correlation of OLCI
LWN and in situ records was observed in the blue spectral band - 412 nm (Tab. 2).
in situ data for CHL_OC4ME, whereas the CHL_NN products exhibit a determina-
tion coefficient of 0.09. The estimated log_RMSE values for both satellite products
are 0.42 and 0.43 mg m-3 for CHL_OC4ME and CHL_NN, respectively. Despite
the significantlly high MPD error estimated for OLCI OC4ME algorithm it was
almost 2 times lower comparing to the standard MODIS (OC3M) and SeaWiFS
(OC4) algorithms, while the results of CHL_NN agreed to those obtained for re-
gional algorithm (Suslin et al, 2018).
CONCLUSIONS
The comparison carried out over almost a three year period of Sentinel 3A/
OLCI Level 2 FR data based on in situ measurements obtained from three different
data sources in western Black Sea, indicated:
systematic underestimation of satellite normalized water-leaving radiances
LWN (λ) with effects more pronounced in the blue and red spectral regions;
significant overestimation of CHL_OC4ME (160% MPD) and CHL_NN
(about 80% MPD) derived pigments concentration.
The results of the study showed that there are strong needs of consistent
reference in situ bio-optical data set with improved spatial and temporal (including
bloom events in the coastal area) coverage for calibration and validation of present
and future satellite ocean color missions in the Black Sea.
278
Evaluation of Sentinel-3A OLCI Ocean Color Products...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Dr. Zibordi from Joint Research Center for providing
the quality controlled Level 2 data from Galata AERONET-OC site and for his sup-
port with the AOP data processing and quality determination. Thanks also go to the
EUMETSAT for the distribution of OLCI data products. This research was supported
by contract №4000123951/18/NL/SC “Bio-optics for ocean color remote sensing of
the Black Sea under the ESA Programme for European Cooperating States for Bul-
garia and contract DO1-161/28.08.2018 “NGIC – National Geoinformation Center
for monitoring, assessment and prediction natural and anthropogenic risks and
disasters” under the Program “National Roadmap for Scientific Infrastructure 2017-
2023” financed by Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria.
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Campbell, J. (1995). The Lognormal Distribution as a Model for Bio-Opti-
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Violeta Slabakova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3089-0126
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Snejana Moncheva
http://www.orcid.org/0000-0002-2679-5062
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Natalyia Slabakova
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3294-5346
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
Nina Dzhembekova
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9620-6422
Institute of Oceanology
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Varna, Bulgaria
E-mail: [email protected]
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Proceeding of 1st International conference on Environmental protection and disaster RISKs
Abstract: The weather forecast of good quality is essential for the humans living
and operating in the Bulgarian Antarctic Base (BAB), located on the Livingston
Island coast at 62.64⁰ S and 60.36⁰ W. The numerical weather prediction models
in southern high latitude regions still need improvement as the user community
is limited, little test cases are documented and validation data are scarce. The
modelling system is based on the WRF model, configured in three nested domains
down to 1 km horizontal resolution, centered over BAB. The main objective of the
study is to configure and validate the WRF model and to recommend certain set-up
parameters like model area coverage, topography, land use, vertical levels, physics
parametrization schemes, preparation of initial and boundary conditions and run
configuration on HPC machines. Three test periods of “bad” weather events are
considered during the summer seasons in 2016, 2017 and 2020. The ability of the 3
days forecast to capture the basic meteorological events in this period is discussed.
Sensitivity experiments to the land use type are conducted and while the MODIS
land data is found to be the most accurate for the region, a slight increase in the soil
thermal capacity results in better model performance.
Keywords: numerical weather prediction, Antarctica, horizontal resolution, land
use type
INTRODUCTION
The Bulgarian Antarctic base St. Kliment Ohridski (BAB) is a national scientific
facility, located on Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands. A specialised
weather forecast of good quality is essential for the people working and living
on this base. The purpose of this work is to set up а limited BAB area forecasting
system based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and validate
its performance. The elevation of the base is 12 to 15 m above sea level, an average
of 25 people work there during the austral summer, usually from late November
until early March. The weather in the region is mostly influenced by extratropical
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cyclones, which form and propagate as Rossby planetary waves. The cyclones
move west to east and tend to diffuse over land, due to friction. Thus, the weather
is highly variable with intense storms and strong wind events occurring regularly.
Several test cases with shifting weather patterns are used to evaluate the model
performance.
MODEL CONFIGURATION
The modelling system is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting model,
version 4.0, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The numerical
model uses a staggered Arakawa C-grid (Skamarock, 2019) and the nesting is
performed in a ration 9:3:1 km. The domain configuration is shown in Figure 1: it
is centered over BAB with coordinates 62.64° S and 60.36° W and consists of three
nested domains d01, d02 and d03. The outermost domain – d01, with a resolution of
9 km, has horizontal dimensions of 999 km in both directions and covers the northern
part of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is a parent domain to the first nested domain – d02,
with a horizontal resolution of 3 km and dimensions of 342 km in both directions. The
finest domain – d03, is nested in d02, and covers the area of Livingston Island and its
neighbouring small islands; the horizontal dimensions of d03 are 129 km in west-east
direction and 111 km in south-north direction. The domain configuration is made so
that there are no high mountains or complex relief near the domain borders.
Figure 1. Three domains coverage- d01, d02 and d03. Background image
from NASA Visible Earth - Blue Marble.
The land surface boundary condition of the modelling area is assembled via
the WRF Preprocessing system program – geogrid, which interpolates topography
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Boriana Chtirkova, Elisaveta Peneva, Gergana Georgieva
and land use type data into the model grid. The topography data is taken from the
GMTED2010 dataset, developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS)
and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and has a horizontal
resolution of 225 m. The fitted in the finest domain topography is shown of Figure
2-a. A comparison with regional maps such as the map from Ivanov (2017) show
that this dataset does not represent accurately Livingston Island. The mountain
range Tangra mountains, reaching heights up to 1700 m, is represented as a flat
surface with elevation of ~50 m. Figure 2-a represents the topography grid in the
finest domain, which has a number of points in the x-direction imax=129 and in the
y-direction – jmax=111, each grid point covers an area of 1 km2.
The WRF model can perform mainly with two land use datasets, which cover
the entire globe – USGS and MODIS. The USGS data is based on satellite advanced
very-high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data, collected in the period April 1992
– March 1993. They contain 24 land use types and have a resolution of 1 km.
The MODIS data (Moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) are gathered
by NASA satellite missions in the period 2001-2005. They are made up of 20
land use type categories and their resolution reaches 500 m. A visual comparison
between the MODIS and USGS land use type data is given in Figures 2-b and 2-c.
According to both datasets, the entire domain area is described with only 2 land use
types – snow/ice and water. The land use type is presented in numerical modelling
through the following parameters: albedo α [%], soil moisture availability M [%],
surface emissivity, ϵ [%], roughness length z0 [m], thermal inertia λT [Jm−2K−1s−1/2]
and surface heat capacity C [Jm−3K−1]. The values of these parameters differ
throughout the seasons and are used to describe the energy, momentum, water and
heat fluxes. They slightly differ between the two datasets, mainly in the parameters
z0 and λT,which are slightly higher within the MODIS data, but the difference
should not result in large computational differences. Comparing Figures 2-b and
2-c, one can conclude that the coastal line, formed by the USGS data is not as
Figure 2. Topography (a) and land use type (b) of the finest domain –
d03 with a resolution of 1 km, imax=129, jmax=111. The coastlines on the image
are taken from the Natural Earth Database (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/)
and have a horizontal resolution of 10 m.
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continuous as the MODIS one. There is a slight displacement of the grid between
the two datasets but this problem is eliminated with a manual choice of grid point
to represent BAB. Having taken this into account, and the fact the MODIS data is
more recently collected, the authors conclude it is better suited for the modelling
system. However, the description of the whole Livingston island as covered with
snow and ice may not still be accurate in recent years. This problem is addressed
further in the text.
For a vertical coordinate in WRF, version 4.0, one can choose a terrain following
(TF) coordinate or a hybrid vertical coordinate (HVC). In the present study, hybrid
η-levels are used, unevenly distributed from the surface up to isobaric level 50 hPa.
In order to determine the optimal number a vertical levels, a sample model run of
a 72 hour forecast with a different number of levels has been performed. All WRF
experiments in the present study are run on the Sofia University Parallel Computer
Center cluster PHYSON. Three different vertical level configurations have been
tested – with 35 vertical levels (close to the WRF minimum number), 50 and 70
levels. The η-levels from the three configurations are distributed with equal density
near the surface but their distribution difference manifests after certain height.
Hence, the description of the atmospheric state near the surface is similar, but the
configuration with the least densely distributed levels in height fails to represent
adequately high altitude phenomena, such as the polar jet stream. All simulations
are performed using the same number of computer cores, 88 in this case, on the
PHYSON cluster. Although being a heterogenic HPC, the PHYSON cores operate
on similar frequencies and the time difference that arises from the fact that different
simulations are run on different CPU types is negligible. The computer time for
the simplest simulation with 35 vertical levels is 9 h 22 min, the forecast with 50
vertical levels is computed for 13 h 18 min and the one with 70 levels – 18 h 33
min. For an optimal configuration, performed for a minimal time, the 50 η-levels
configuration is chosen.
Even though the high horizontal and vertical resolution of recent numerical
models allows us to describe smaller scale phenomena, other physical processes on
scales smaller than the model grid still need to be parametrized. The parametrization
schemes and their combinations has a profound effect on numerical forecasting,
especially in larger time scales and therefore the schemes should be chosen
carefully. The subgrid processes that are or may be parametrized in WRF comprise
of microphysics, convection, turbulence in the planetary boundary layer (PBL),
interactions between the atmosphere and the surface layer and the longwave and
shortwave radiation. The choice of parametrization schemes for the present study has
been made through a literature review. The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System1
(AMPS) produces numerical forecasts for the Antarctic region, made through a
modified PolarWRF (Hines & Bromwich, 2008). The physics parametrization in
the present configuration are chosen to be coherent and done in accordance with
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MODEL VALIDATION
At latitudes around 60°, two of the general circulation cells are closed – namely
the Ferrel and polar cells, enabling the formation of a convective zone with westerly
dominating winds. The Rossby waves form and propagate over this low-pressure
system, with extratropical cyclones influencing the weather by producing storms
and high-speed winds. Three test cases with rapidly changing weather are chosen
among the recent years weather records from the GFS model analysis and in-situ
observations at BAB: 16-19 December 2016, 26 February-1 March 2020 and 25-28
January 2020. The model configuration has been validated against measurements
from an automatic meteorological station at BAB, synoptic measurements in
the nearby meteorological stations2 and ERA-5 climatic hourly reanalysis data
(Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2017). The in-situ measurements come from
an automatic meteorological station Davis Vantage Vue for the 2016 and 2017 test
cases, and an automatic station assembled by MeteoRocks3 for the 2020 test case.
The validated meteorological variables are temperature at 2 m, surface pressure,
wind speed and wind direction. The total number of synoptic stations in the largest
domain is 18, two of which lie in the finest domain. The synoptic observations
from “Base Arturo Prat” with WMO index 890057 and coordinates 62.3° N,
-59.41°E, are used in the comparison as indicative of the weather pattern in the
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region. They are in agreement with the observations from BAB in all test cases. The
validation process is divided into 3 parts – the first one consists of a comparison of
model simulations with different horizontal resolution, the second one is a general
validation for all test cases and lastly a sensitivity experiment to the surface type is
performed.
pronounced. The combination of the BAB land and its neighbouring sea point,
which is comprised by the average value in every time instant, simulate the rapid
cooling and the higher temperatures relatively well. In order to give a quantitative
measure of the forecast skill, the BIAS, Root mean square error (RMSE) and Mean
absolute error (MAE), are calculated as:
where n is the number of discrete values, Mi is the model simulated value and Oi – the
corresponding (closest in time) observed value. The WRF values are output every
hour, therefore for a 3 days forecast n=72, in the case of no missing observations.
These statistical measures possess the dimensionality of the measured variable and
are calculated for each of the model points described above relative to the BAB
measurements and to the ERA-5 reanalysis separately. The results are shown in
Table 1.
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The BIAS is a measure for the direction of the deviation. All its values for
the temperature at 2 m are negative, which again indicates the tendency for lower
temperatures, calculated by the model. The numerical comparison of the simulated
2 m temperature with BAB observations and ERA-5 data shows best results in the
sea point next to BAB.
The pressure time series, shown on Figure 3-b, suggest that this field is predicted
extremely well by the numerical forecast. The negative BIAS shows that the
forecasted values are slightly under the measured ones, the smallest deviations of
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Boriana Chtirkova, Elisaveta Peneva, Gergana Georgieva
RMSE=0.71 hPa against BAB observations and 1.36 hPa against ERA-5 reanalysis
are as well observed at the sea point in the finest domain.
The wind speed is simulated quite well, which is seen by the amplitudes of the
model curves on Figure 3-c and the close to 0 BIAS. The forecast statistics are similar
in the simulations with different resolution, as the largest deviations is RMSE=3.95
ms-1 in the sea point. The wind speed maximum around 21 UTC on 27 January 2020
is described fairly well despite the higher peak in the model with ~ 5ms-1.
In order to calculate the statistics for the wind direction, Δd needs to be introduced
as the difference in degrees between the simulated and the observed wind direction,
it varies in the interval Δd[-180°, 180°]. This quantity is calculated differently,
depending on the difference between Mi and Oi (Jiménez & Dudhia, 2013):
The results of the comparison between the forecasted direction and the measured
one give RMSE values reaching up to 60°. The comparison of the simulated wind
direction with ERA-5 data shows more promising results with RMSE values less
than 30°. This difference may be due to various factors, one of them being the
inadequate topography data, used by the WRF and ERA-5 simulations. Another
possible error may have arisen from an imperfect placement of the mast resulting
in a Venturi effect or turbulent eddies at heights below 10 m. According to the
forecast statistics and Figure 3-d, the horizontal resolution does not have a profound
effect on the wind direction. The wind speed is slightly higher in the sea point,
due to the smaller roughness length z0 over the sea surface. The wind direction
is approximately the same in all grid points in the comparison. There is a scarce
distinction between the WRF and ERA-5 values in the period from 9 UTC on 26
January until 3 UTC on 27 January 2020.
the finest domain. The pressure values are also affected. The sea grid point produces
the slightest deviations with observed data, which suggests that the location of BAB
is strongly influenced by the sea. The forecast statistics for all covered test cases
and their average value are presented in Table 2. The test cases in 2016 and 2020 are
described relatively well by the model, whereas the 2017 test case proved to be a
numerical challenge and the deviations between simulated and observed values are
quite high. The WRF shows an average temperature RMSE of 2.59°C against BAB
measurements, the pressure field is forecasted very well with an average RMSE of
just 1.34 hPa for the three cases. The wind speed RMSE ranges from 2 to 9 ms-1 for
the different test cases, the average value being 5 ms-1. The wind direction is highly
biased with RMSE values up to 70°, which could be due to the poor topography
representation or flawed in-situ measurements.
Table 2. Forecast statistics calculated against measurement data and ERA-5 data
for the three test cases and their average value for each meteorological variable.
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Boriana Chtirkova, Elisaveta Peneva, Gergana Georgieva
The simulation results for the 2020 test case are shown on Figure 4-a for the 2
m temperature and on Figure 4-b for the 10 m wind speed. The BAB measurements
and the ERA-5 reanalysis are given as real data representatives. The dark green
curve depicts the “Grasslands” experiment, the light blue one represents the “Barren
or Sparsely Vegetated” experiment, and the violet one is for the “Barren Tundra”
experiment. The yellow curve corresponds to the original simulation with a land
use type of “Snow and Ice” and it is the same as in the previous figures.
The 2 m temperature is highly sensitive to the land use type. On Figure 4-a, one can
see that the diurnal cycle is more pronounced, when the surface is different form snow
and ice, thus the thermal capacity is higher. Table 4 presents the forecast statistics for
these simulations calculated against BAB measurements, ERA-5 reanalysis and the
unmodified model run – the last group is given in order to evaluate the model response
to this change. The numerical comparison shows that the 2 m temperature is the highest
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with grasslands, slightly lower with barren tundra, even lower with barren or sparsely
vegetated soil and the lowest with snow and ice, which corresponds precisely to the
respective thermal capacities in Table 3. Accordingly, with higher temperatures, the
forecast BIAS approaches 0. The smallest values of RMSE and MAE against BAB
measurements are obtained with grasslands, because the temperature in this experiment
is the highest. The best results against ERA-5 data are obtained with the original
simulation with snow and ice, which suggests that the WRF and ERA-5 models
are configured with similar land type data. The atmospheric pressure field is almost
unaffected by the change in the land type. The wind speed at 10 m is only slightly
altered with values of ~0.5 ms-1 – the results with the least RMSE=3.78 against BAB
measurements are obtained with the barren tundra surface type. Figure 4-b shows that
the 10 m wind speed timeseries curve is similar in all experiments. The average wind
speed is the highest with the barren or sparsely vegetated soil, although its roughness
length z0 is relatively high. Overall, the change in land use type affects all surface
meteorological variables, but the largest differences are observed in the 2 m temperature
field, which is relatively increased by ~1°C with grasslands, compared to snow and ice.
Although the “Grasslands” experiment produces the best results, it does not ideally
describe the situation. The experiments are conducted with a change of only 1 km2 of
the land surface, while the Landsat images and summer photos in the region suggest
a higher area without snow. The most adequate description of the land surface would
be the use of more recent satellite data to alter a larger area in the finest domain, as
well as parts of the larger model domains. The barren or sparsely vegetated soil also
produces fairly good results. The differences are explained by the values of the surface
parameters, indicative for each land type. The lower thermal capacity C, as well as the
lower thermal inertia λT of the barren soil, in combination with the low albedo α, lead
to the absorption of more short-wave radiation and a faster warming from the Sun.
The relatively low surface emissivity reduces radiative cooling during the night, which
explains the higher night temperatures of barren soil, compared to snow and ice land
type in WRF. As a conclusion, the snow and ice land use type does not adequately
represent Livingston island in the summer season.
CONCLUSION
A complete configuration of the WRF model for forecasting the weather in the
Livingston island area is set up. The GMTED2010 topography data is proven to
be flawed in the region, for this reason the authors advise the use of the Reference
Elevation Model of Antarctica (REMA) in further simulations, which is a high
resolution, time-stamped Digital Surface Model (DSM) of Antarctica at 8-meter
spatial resolution (Howat et al., 2019). The model grid is centred over BAB, the
length of each simulation is 72 hours and the results are compared with measurements
at BAB, nearby synoptic stations and the ERA-5 reanalysis. Various cases with
passing cyclones and shift of weather patterns are addressed in our study. The WRF
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is found to represent satisfactory the temperature at 2 m, sea level pressure and wind
at 10 m in the point of BAB during weather shift events. A comparison of results
with different horizontal resolution suggests that the forecast quality increases with
the model grid resolution. The BAB point is found to be strongly influenced by the
sea and its effect should be considered in the forecast representation. Further details
on the influence of sea surface temperature on the forecast skill can be found in
Chtirkova (2020) and Chtirkova & Peneva (2020).
A sensitivity experiment with altering the land use type in one grid point (1 km2) in
the finest domain is carried out. This grid point corresponds to the location of the base,
where the snow melts completely during summer and reveals the rocky soil underneath.
A change in the land use type, respectively the thermal capacity of the underlying
surface, significantly increases the forecast quality. This experiment shows that MODIS
data, collected with satellite missions during 2005, does not adequately represent the
current situation on places, affected by climate change, such as Livingston Island. For
accurate simulations in these regions, a revision of the land use type is advisory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to express their gratitude to all people and projects, involved
in the operation and maintenance of the PHYSON cluster (http://physon.phys.
uni-sofia.bg/about-physon-bg).
NOTES
1. NCAR, UCAR – The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS): https://
www2.mmm.ucar.edu/rt/amps/
2. Synoptic data from the weather information service OGIMET: https://www.
ogimet.com/
3. The MeteoRocks project: https://meteo.rocks/page/aboutus
REFERENCES
Skamarock, William C. et al. (2019). A Description of the Advanced
Research WRF Model Version 4, UCAR/NCAR. doi: 10.5065/1DFH-
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L.L. Ivanov (2017). Antarctica: Livingston Island and Smith Island. Scale
1:100000 topographic map, Manfred Wörner Foundation, ISBN 978-
619-90008-3-0 .
Hines, K. M., and D. H. Bromwich (2008). Development and testing of
Polar WRF. Part I. Greenland ice sheet meteorology. Mon. Wea. Rev.,
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hines_bromwich_mwr_2008.pdf.
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Boriana Chtirkova, Elisaveta Peneva, Gergana Georgieva
Boriana Chtirkova
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5743-8511
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
E-mail: [email protected]
Elisaveta Peneva
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1325-685X
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
E-mail: [email protected]
Gergana Georgieva
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3515-9524
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
Faculty of Physics
“St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia
E-mail: [email protected]
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