2022

Author(s): Sadar AJ

Concerns over regional climate change include its impact on air quality. A major contributor to unhealthy air quality is surface-based temperature inversions. Poor air quality is a serious public health concern that is often addressed by public health agencies. To assist with understanding the climatology and trend of temperature inversions for a large public health department, innovative pragmatic criteria were developed and used to determine morning and evening surface-based temperature inversions from datasets derived from Pittsburgh National Weather Service (NWS) radiosonde measurements made from 1 January 1991 through 31 December 2020. During this 30-year period, the strength of the morning (7 a.m. EST; 12 UTC) inversions was 3.9 °C on average. The depth of the inversion layer measured an average height of 246 m above the ground. The inversions tended to dissipate by 10 a.m. EST. The frequency of occurrence of morning inversions averaged 47%. The mean strength of the evening (7 p.m. EST; 00 UTC) inversions was 1.1 °C with a mean depth of 101 m above the ground. The frequency of evening inversion occurrence averaged 20% during this period. The 30-year climatology revealed generally declining frequency of inversions in the Pittsburgh area. Morning surface-based inversion strengths usually declined while morning depths and break times were steady. Evening inversion strengths and depths increased overall during the 30-year period. Monthly means showed a morning-evening overlap of some months that record the most frequent substantial inversions during the fall time of the year, coinciding with the time when the worst air pollution events occur.

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20504-7