JimŽnez, JosŽ, National University of Colombia,
Columbia
One of the major
environmental problems of modern metropolis is air pollution, and this problem
tends to be worse in develop’ng countries. Actually numerical models can help
to understand air quality processes in the cities, but the simulation
challenges are often greater when modeling is associated with mountainous urban
areas, where air circulation is complicated due to topographic and building
conditions. This is the case for the metropolitan Aburra valley (Colombia),
which is located in a branch of the Colombian Andes range, at the tropical
belt, exposed to the major climatological influences of the Pacific Ocean, the
Caribean Sea and the Amazonian Forest. The present research focuses on the
study of the mixing height (an important parameter for dispersion analysis) in
the metropolitan region of the Aburr‡ Valley, where, mainly owing to
geographical and topographic
factors, the pollutant circulation is weak and the urban air quality is
deficient, as can be seen in the records over the last 30 years.