Climatological evaluation in a Central Anatolian city and indirect effects of climatological variation on air quality

Climate is defined as the statistics of weather over a long period of time. Climate has a dynamic structure, and climate change is caused either by natural or anthropogenic effects. Meteorological parameters are routinely recorded by national weather stations. In this study, climate variability was analyzed in a mid-populated city in the middle of the Anatolian Peninsula. Humidity, temperature, precipitation, open surface evaporation, and solar radiation records over 57-year period from 1960 to 2016 were considered. The increase in temperature and solar radiation was obvious. The increase rates were 0.05 °C and 0.62 W/m² for temperature and solar radiation, respectively. Relative humidity showed a declining trend from 64 to 53%. This study also aimed to evaluate the climate change of planetary boundary layer development, which influences air quality level. AERMET, which is the AERMOD meteorological preprocessor was exploited in order to simulate the planetary boundary layer height, and twice daily upper air soundings, wind speed, wind direction, ambient temperature, and cloud cover have been used as minimum required parameters. The complete meteorological data available were between 2006 and 2016; for that reason, the boundary layer was calculated for 11 years. The determined average boundary layer height was 1018 m in 2006 and was reduced to 889 m in 2016.