Analysis of long-range transport of particulate matters in connection with air circulation over Central and Eastern part of Europe

The aim of this paper is to establish a practical methodology for examining the long-range transport of particulate matters (PM), named TSP. The daily concentration values of TSP from years 2001 and 2002, for three sites, Baia Mare (RO), Vienna (AU), Aosta (IT), were analyzed. In order to connect the main air circulation types with the aerosol concentrations at the selected sites, the catalogues of Circulation and Weather type Classification (COST733) were used. Spectral analysis was made using spectrum software based on Lomb-Scargle periodograms, and multiresolution analysis (MRA) technique based on Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) with Fejer-Korovkin in 22 points wavelet filter (waveslim package). Spectral analysis shows a dominant one-year periodicity for all the time series with a variance around 22% for each time series. In addition, several winters TSP pollution episodes from each city were analyzed using a back trajectory model (HYSPLIT4), in order to compare with the resulted air circulation types. Two important concluding remarks emerge: (i) the Eastern part of Europe shows a dominant easterly air circulation and central Europe is characterized by south-west air circulations, which drive the maxima of pollutant concentrations; (ii) the choice of the domain for analysis of the circulation types is very important. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.