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Many of the times when I see the weather, an almanac is shown. When it says the air quality is good, moderate, or poor, what makes them those conditions? And when the air quality is poor, what makes it unhealthy?
-Carly
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Good question! There's a few ingredients to help drop the air quality into the unhealthy ranges. Clearly, pollution from homes, houses and factories all contribute but the weather sometimes doesn't help the situation.
Most of the pollution comes from vehicles and factories. Hence why mass transit and car pooling if you can are great ideas all the time and on polluted days. Inside the funky gunk outside is: Carbon Monoxide, Ground Level Ozone, Particulate Matter composted of dust and soot and Sulfur Dioxide. Don't those sound gross? They are! All of these can impact your health tremendously.
If everyone on the Wasatch Front parked their car for one day during the week we could cut some of the pollution down by 125 TONS! Dust and Soot can come from a myriad of things including wood burning stoves and other industrial sources. Ozone can form from exhaust and sunlight and Sulfur Dioxide can come from things like oil and gasoline.
When we have high pressure we get what's called an "inversion". An inversion means something is inverted, in this case it means that temperature is increasing as you go higher up and colder air is sitting at the ground. Cold air is more dense and sinks. The cold air then gets polluted and cannot rise into the warm air that is trapping it in. We get stuck basically in a polluted layer. So when we have high pressure in the winter time we can have a few nasty days of pollution build up.
On a normal day we can have winds and the atmosphere allows for the pollution to mix out. When it gets stuck, we have to breahthe it in.
Not everyone will be able to just park their car for the day but there are little things we can all do to help cut down on pollution. Check the link on the right and find out how just some little changes in your routine can help clear the air. You can also find out what contributes to air pollution.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
