ISSS608 2018-19 T1 Assign Kateryna Mazurenko Insights
AIR QUALITY IN BULGARIA
|
|
|
|
|
|
Typical day in Sofia city
Official air quality measurement show us that:
The same trend occurs every year - when particles concentration increase in cold season and decrease in hot season. All the stations show similar patterns with no extreme difference.
We can see that there is almost no coverage (no measurement) at all for year 2017, as well we can conclude that not all the stations have the same coverage. Using filters for a station, for example 54A shows only data for time period Jan 2013 - Oct 2015, and station 79A - only for year 2018 till September.
Year 2013 shows the highest pollution in December 24-26 (about 400mg/m3), similar amount was also captured in January 2014 with peak on 6-7 Jan. This is the highest confirmed official data, since that time situation got better - 2015 peak number is less than 300mg/m3 (in January) and even less in December. However, year 2017 also show pretty high concentrations - about 300mg/m3, but the data only available for two month (Nov-Dec) which creates gap in trend interpretation. Year 2018 also shows the highest particles concentration in January 7-8.
Comparing to meteo-data, for the period available (since November 2017), none of humidity, precipitation or wind speed shows any kind of relation with particles concentration. However, temperature graph shows that in warm season starting from April, PM10 concentration remains within limits. And sometimes peak lowest temperature corresponds to peak PM10 concentration.
Air pollution measurements analysis
For the data available, first of all it covers different time periods. As already mentioned, there is a gap for official data in year 2017 as well as some of the stations provide only partial data with some smaller gaps in between (for example 40A doesn’t show anything in July 2016).
Citizen data is only available since September 2017 and overall it shows similar trends to official data with the highest points on January 8 and January 27, 2017. At the same time, citizen data show higher figures for P1 and lower for P2 (by overall trend, peaks assessment and median values). There is not enough confidence to interpret P1 and P2 exact meaning.
Looking to citizen sensors, geographically they partially cover the country with higher concentration of measurement near big cities like Sofia and Plovdiv. Sofia capital region has the best coverage. Meteo-data from citizen measurement has a lot of missing values excluded on data preparation stage.
Checking peak-dates from previous dashboard we can see on map that through the city all measurement were red - it means concentration higher than 50mg/m3, but higher concentration distributed on northern part. Under coordinate 42.686 lat 23.400 long it was registered 937mg of P1 and 409.5 of P2! However already on January 10 all city was ‘blue’. By playing through the time we can see how “bubbles” appear and disappear on city map, showing that some extreme concentrations may be captured one time only.
Factors potentially involved into causing polluting
After looking to seasonality of air pollution concentrations, I would conclude that the highest dependency of air pollution is seasonal - especially in winter month December and January, which probably is resulted from burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation and house heating. December peak corresponds to Catholic Christmas celebration (December 25th) and January peak corresponds to Orthodox Christmas (January 7th), both are celebrated in Eastern Europe. Potentially heavy particles concentration may be affected by fireworks in city during celebration days.
Bulgaria doesn’t have natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, topology data provided also doesn’t relate with any of the pollutions captured.
According to wikipedia, Bulgaria is a major producer of electricity, which is not only produces but exports electric energy to other states in a region. Potential reason of much higher pollution in winter season is increased demand for energy
Thermal power plants are also of high importance with most of the capacity concentrated in the Maritsa Iztok Complex. In November 2014 the Maritsa Iztok 2 lignite-fired power station was ranked as the industrial facility that is causing the highest damage costs to health and the environment in Bulgaria and the entire European Union by the European Environment Agency.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Bulgaria
National statistics institute of Bulgaria shows that the highest production of solid fuel shown in January, the same is true for electricity.
http://www.nsi.bg/en/content/5030/production-and-deliveries-solid-fuels
http://www.nsi.bg/en/content/5027/production-and-deliveries-electricity
