Investigations on PM 10 , PM 2.5 , and Their Ratio over the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Investigations on PM10, PM2.5, and Their Ratio over the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Abdelgadir Abuelgasim1 · Ashraf Farahat2 Received: 23 June 2020 / Accepted: 5 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Worldwide monitoring of ambient outdoor air quality is critical for planning mitigation measures and controls for public safety. Several airborne pollutants are measured and continuously monitored by multiple government environmental agencies. Such pollutants include particulate matter (PM) levels, both P M10 and P M2.5, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead, and volatile organic compounds. However, scientific studies related to air pollution and the temporal variability of PM levels in the United Arab Emirates are limited. This study comprehensively analyzes the spatiotemporal variations in PM10, PM2.5, and the PM2.5/PM10 ratio over the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates during 2017–2018. The PM levels are high during April–September, peaking in July each year, likely because of intense dust and sandstorms; the same levels are low during October–March. Industrial areas have higher annual average PM10 levels (162 μg/ m3) compared to urban core areas (132 μg/m3) and suburban areas (131 μg/m3). In general, the values of the PM2.5/PM10 ratio are low ranging between annual averages of 0.29 and 0.49 across the industrial, urban core, and desert/suburban areas. This is a characteristic particular to arid and semi-arid environments owing to the prevalence of high quantities of P M10 leading to a low PM2.5/PM10 ratio. In addition, this low ratio indicates that, within the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, air pollution is primarily driven by natural processes related to sand particle uplift, movement, and deposition rather than by human activities. Keywords Particulate matter · Atmospheric aerosols · United Arab Emirates · PM ratio
1 Introduction Air pollutants, especially particulate matter (PM), has been actively researched over the past few decades (Basahi et al. 2017; Bell et al. 2004). Airborne PM is generally calculated as the total sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in the air. Such PM is regarded as a complex mixture of both organic and inorganic particles arising from smoke, dust, soot, or liquid droplets. PM considerably varies in size (typically measured via the aerodynamic diameter) and is traditionally classified into coarse and fine particles. Coarse * Abdelgadir Abuelgasim [email protected] 1
National Center for Water and Energy, Department of Geography and Urban Sustainability, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Department of Physics, College of General Studies, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
2
particles usually vary in size between 2.5 and 10 μm and are referred to as PM10. Conversely, fine particles are usually those that have an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5
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