Preliminary wind analysis regarding different speed ranges in the city of La Plata, Argentina

La Plata city (approximately 800 000 inhabitants) has intense traffic and industrial activity; nevertheless, the city has no governmental air monitoring network for air pollutants and winds have been scarcely studied. Wind observations provided here (covering 1998- 2007) belong to a weather station...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ratto, Gustavo, Nico, Andrés Ignacio
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:Argentina
Institución:Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Repositorio:SEDICI (UNLP)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:sedici.unlp.edu.ar:10915/123684
Acceso en línea:http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/123684
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ingeniería
Calm analysis
La Plata
Wind analysis
Wind roses
Análise de calmaria
Análise de vento
Rosa dos ventos
Descripción
Sumario:La Plata city (approximately 800 000 inhabitants) has intense traffic and industrial activity; nevertheless, the city has no governmental air monitoring network for air pollutants and winds have been scarcely studied. Wind observations provided here (covering 1998- 2007) belong to a weather station that was contrasted against the unique governmental site in the city area (the Airport). The present preliminary study analyses wind direction frequencies according to wind speeds and emphasizes wind patters within the first hour after calm occurrences. Results show that independently of the wind speed, wind direction frequency roses are in general similar to each other. Low wind speeds may occur most of the time (on average 58.2 %) and together with calm occurrences (on average 17.1% ) constitute an important factor for the accumulation of air pollutants. The proposed "outgoing of calm" wind direction frequency roses were found to be appropriate to gain knowledge in the structure of winds that transport pollutants towards exposed population after calm occurrences. Long term systematic meteorological fieldworks should be encouraged in the future so as to provide better tools for environmental modeling.