In the Kanto plain, severe air pollution due to suspended particulate matter (SPM), nitrogen oxides (NO
2),
etc. occur most frequently in early winter. The meteorological structure of calm and stable condition has been analyzed statistically in connection with the high-level pollution in the three Decembers from 1989 to 1991.
The daily average concentration of SPM has a high correlation with that of NO
2, and is very uniformly distributed over a wide region including the inland portion of the Tokyo metropolitan area and the central part of Saitama Prefecture.
On most high-SPM days (daily average ≥130 μg/m
3), hourly concentration does not lower below 100 μg/m
3since the previous nights, suggesting that weather systems with a time scale longer than one day cause the very high concentrations.
On those days, the temperature difference between Mt. Tsukuba (870m ASL) and the Kanto plain surface below 100 m ASL almost vanishes in the daily average. This results from synoptic-scale warming in the upper layer.
The differencial cooling compared with the low-SPM days (daily average <90 μg/m
3) is larger by about 2 K in the central part of the plain than in the areas along the mountains (above 100m ASL). It can be adequately called as a cold air lake. In this region, a very calm condition lasts because no local wind system affectsthere, while the sea breeze develops along the shore of Tokyo Bay and the valley winds along the mountains:
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