Wind could be a major reason behind polluting cities - Study
Submitted by Rachna Pandya on August 27, 2012 - 2:48pm
Dominant polluting specks emitted by combustion engines vehicles, fuels, refineries, pesticides and others create fluid flows in the winds. These specific particles are believed to form claustrophobic coherent structures affecting the normal environmental condition of the technologically elevated cities.
The findings could be proved extremely beneficial for the environment officials to pick up highly and moderately concentrated pollutant pockets of the region and to work upon their redressal, says the report submitted by the journal Physics of Fluids.
The Study
To quote what the Wenbo Tang of Arizona State University, Tempe, said, "The unexpected finding is that coherent patterns in fluid flows have no real analog (parallel) in nature."
The study took place with joint efforts from Tang and his colleagues Brent Knutson, Alex Mahalov and Reneta Dimitrova from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US.
The mathematical model which Tang and his colleagues used to imitate movement of the pollutant particles showed patterns emerging from the movement of particles carried by wind flows.
N. America’s concerns over pollution spread
Another study on North American air pollution was recently conducted at University of Maryland, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Universities Space Research Association. The researchers determined airborne pollutants by examining the satellite data.
As per the study, the 50 percent of the North American pollution which is perilously triggering climate change has been arriving from European, African and Asian regions; while the emissions from North American’s own factories and power generation pollutants have little role to play in its domestic environment.
"People have been concerned about how an emerging Asian economy and increased man-made pollution will influence North American air quality and climate, but we found that dust makes large contributions here… So we cannot just focus on pollution. We need to consider dust." maintained Hongbin Yu of the University of Maryland.
