Atmospheric pollution concentration peaks in the Região da Grande Vitória, ES, Brazil: an application of logistic regression

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the impacts of meteorological variables temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and precipitation in the probability of occurrence of pollutants concentration peaks/episodes in the Região da Grande Vitória (RGV), Espírito Santo, Brazil, using the Logit model, for period from 2012/01/01 to 2014/12/31. It were adopted time series of the pollutants PTS, PM₁₀, SO₂, CO, NO₂, O₃ and meteorological variables (wind speed, relative humidity, rainfall and temperature) obtained from the State Institute of Environment and Resources Water (IEMA). As expected, the results showed that the contents of the RGV concentrations are associated with changes of the meteorological variables. The results showed that the precipitation and the wind speed contributed significantly to the reduction of the probability of air quality “not good”. The Logit model proved to be a satisfactory statistical tool for evaluating the air quality “not good” in the study region.

Keywords:
Atmospheric pollution; Logit model; meteorological variables