Yellow sand, whose health risk is also being discussed.In that observation, a new method was developed to improve the judgment accuracy.In addition to Assistant Professor Teppei Ansei (Institute of Engineering) of Hokkaido University, the research was conducted by a group of Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Research Institute, Tokyo University, Okayama University, and NASA in the United States.
Yellow sand is a well-known naturally occurring air pollution in spring.The effects on asthma in children are being discussed, and it is important to accurately capture information on the arrival of yellow sand when considering people's health and countermeasures.However, visual observations by the Japan Meteorological Agency have confirmed cases where yellow sand cannot be captured.
Therefore, the research group conducted an objective method using multiple data for March 2016, 3, when the Japan Meteorological Agency did not report the observation of yellow sand, although it was possible to confirm the haze that seems to reach Hokkaido on satellite images. I tried the yellow sand discrimination analysis by.
We used observation data from Sapporo City (Hokkaido University campus) and Takikawa City, and global grid reanalysis data created by NASA.Observation data was obtained from air pollution observation equipment centered on aerosol sensors (manufactured by Shinyei Technology Co., Ltd.).Aerosols are fine particles that are floating in large numbers in the air.
As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that Kosa came flying from the afternoon of this day, and the aerosol sensor grasped the timing well.In the future, it is expected that it will be possible to detect and discriminate yellow sand with high accuracy relatively easily by combining improvements to the aerosol sensor and other observation data.
Hokkaido University is currently preparing observation equipment to make it a constant monitoring and observation base for air pollution in northern Japan.In the future, we would like to provide air pollution monitoring data so that it can be used by various people such as researchers.
Paper information:[Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere (SOLA)] An unreported Asian dust (Kosa) event in Hokkaido, Japan: A case study of 7 March 2016 (English)
