Comparison of objective air-mass types and the Peczely weather types and their ability to classify levels of air pollutants in Szeged, Hungary

Abstract

This paper compares the efficiency of a system of objective air-mass types and the Peczely's weather types in classifying pollution levels over the Carpathian Basin for the winter and summer months. Based on the ECMWF data set, daily sea-level pressure fields analysed at 00 UTC were related to the levels of air pollutants for both the objective air-mass types and the Peczely-types in Szeged. The data base comprises daily values of 12 meteorological and eight pollutant parameters for the period 1997-2001. Mean sea-level pressure fields of the Peczely-types show higher independence from each other than those of the objective clusters in both seasons. In the winter months, anticyclonic types are mostly favourable, while cyclonic ones are mostly negligible in classification of pollutant levels both for the objective and the Peczely-types. In the summer months, neither the objective nor the Peczely classifications are effective in categorisation of pollutant concentrations.