Re:Graphing Air Pollution in China
by taylorwc on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @11:57AM
(#5067640)
Wondering what the massive, yet brief, spikes in Guangzhou are...the ceiling of the Hazardous category of the AQI is capped at 500. That would mean that readings like the 1/12/13 of 827 are quite literally 'off-the-chart.'
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The safe bet would be some atmospheric event that concentrated existing pollution. Any new pollution generation event would be expected to have more impact on the baseline, right?
Did a bit more poking around. Could be a temperature inversion causing a spike (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/slc/climate/TemperatureInversions.ph...). Would be heavily dependent on the location of the sensor and surrounding topography, which all fits. If I find time, I might overlay weather data and see what it looks like.
Re:Graphing Air Pollution in China
by icegreentea on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @04:42PM
(#5069220)
Possibly. They appear to be events that truly saturate the sensor, as all of the spikes have the exact same concentration and air quality index readings (995 and 827 respectively).