VARIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLANETARY BOUNDARY LAYER HEIGHT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PM2.5 CONCENTRATION OVER CHINA

Abstract:

The planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) was calculated using the radiosonde sounding data, including 120 L-band operational sites and 8 GPS sites in China. The diurnal and seasonal variations of PBLH were analyzed using radiosonde sounding (OBS-PBLH) and ERA data (ERA-PBLH). Based on comparison and error analyses, we discussed the main error sources in these data. The frequency distributions of PBLH variations under different regimes (the convective boundary layer, the neutral residual layer, and the stable boundary layer) can be well fitted by a Gamma distribution and the shape parameter k and scale parameter s values were obtained for different regions of China. The variation characteristics of PBLH were found in summer under these three regimes for different regions. The relationships between PBLH and PM2.5 concentration generally follow a power law under very low or no precipitation conditions in the region of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in summer. The results usually deviated from this power distribution only under strong precipitation or high relative humidity conditions because of the effects of hygroscopic growth of aerosols or wet deposition. The OBS-PBLH provided a reasonable spatial distribution relative to ERA-PBLH. This indicates that OBS-PBLH has the potential for identifying the variation of PM2.5 concentration.