Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

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Atmospheric Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosres

On the association between characteristics of the atmospheric boundary T

layer and air pollution concentrations
⁎
Yuvala, , Yoav Levib, Uri Dayanc, Ilan Levyd, David M. Brodaya
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
b
Israel Meteorological Service, P.O. Box 25, Bet Dagan 5025001, Israel
c
Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel
d
Air quality and climate change division, Ministry of Environmental Protection, 125 Menachem Begin road, Tel Aviv 61071, Israel

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Air pollution in the lower atmosphere is a global concern. Characteristics of the planetary boundary layer (PBL)
Air pollution are considered important determinants of the dispersion and the concentrations of pollutants. This work explores
Convective boundary layer the association between characteristics of the PBL and corresponding air pollution data, separately for different
Residual boundary layer PBL states. Five years (2014–2018) of twice daily (01:30 and 13:30 local time) high resolution radiosonde data
Stable boundary layer
were used to estimate the convective and stable boundary layer heights (CBL and SBL, respectively), and the
Temperature lapse rate
temperature lapse rate, in Bet Dagan, Israel. In 23% of the nights, mostly cloudy ones, no indication for an SBL
was found but a clear top of a ground–based residual layer (RBL) was detected. The concentrations of NO, NO2,
NOx and PM2.5 were negatively correlated with the heights of the CBL and RBL but positively correlated with the
SBL height. Their association with the lapse rate was always negative, weak in daytime (CBL) but very strong
during the night (SBL and RBL). The associations with the O3 concentrations were opposite in sign to those with
the primary pollutants. The PBL height using the bulk Richardson number method was most strongly associated
with the CBL and RBL concentrations but we found it unsuitable for estimating the height of the SBL. Our results
demonstrate the importance of accounting for the different states of the PBL. In particular, they suggest that
during SBL conditions, the common practice of using the PBL volume as a determinant of pollutant con-
centrations might not be appropriate.

1. Introduction Tennekes, 1984; Vogelezang and Holtslag, 1996), with verification of

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is the lowest part of the at-
mosphere through which the Earth's surface exchanges mass, mo-
mentum and heat with the free atmosphere. In clear weather conditions
daytime surface heating generates convection and the build up of a
convective boundary layer (CBL). Radiation cooling during the night
results in stable atmospheric conditions, and the creation of a stable
boundary layer (SBL) close to the surface below a residual of the pre-
vious day CBL aloft (Fernando and Weil, 2010; Klein et al., 2016). In the
middle and lower latitudes, the morning transition between SBL to CBL
conditions is quick and occurs shortly after sunrise (Taylor et al., 2014).
The late evening transition from CBL to SBL can be slow, especially in
urban setting where the urban heat island counteracts the radiation
cooling (Sarrat et al., 2006; Taylor et al., 2014).
Many studies examined various aspects of the PBL. Early works
were mainly theoretical (e.g., Tennekes, 1973; Yu, 1978; Driedonks and
the theoretical formulations usually based on the few available sources
e.g., the Wangara field experiment in Australia (Yu, 1978) and the
Cabauw tower measurements in the Netherlands (Vogelezang and
Holtslag, 1996). In other cases, the PBL parameters were extracted from
model output (e.g., Lieman and Alpert, 1993). The 21st century has
seen an explosive increase in modern measurement methods for
studying the PBL, and in the amount of available data. Radiosonde
profiling is still the main operational tool (e.g., Seidel et al., 2010;
Seidel et al., 2012; Guo et al., 2016; Miao et al., 2018), carried out
global–wide in thousands of locations, usually twice daily. They are
corroborated by field campaigns of in–situ measurements using teth-
ered balloons and aircraft (Dayan et al., 1988; Balsley et al., 2006;
Balsley et al., 2008; Pournazeri et al., 2012). The emergence of remote
sensing instruments based on acoustic properties (SODAR, Emeis and
Schäfer, 2006, Neves and Fisch, 2015), optical properties (Ceilometer,
Emeis and Schäfer, 2006; Wagner and Schäfer, 2017), aerosols

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion, I.I.T., Haifa 32000, Israel.
E-mail address: lavuy@tx.technion.ac.il (Yuval).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2019.104675
Received 8 April 2019; Received in revised form 4 September 2019; Accepted 6 September 2019
Available online 09 September 2019
0169-8095/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Yuval, et al.
concentration gradients (LIDAR, Hennemuth and Lammert, 2006;
Kotthaus et al., 2018; Xiang et al., 2019) and the Doppler effect (wind
profilers; Uzan and Alpert, 2012) enables continuous measurements of
the PBL height but usually in a limited number of locations and/or for a
limited period of time.
Most of the PBL studies mention its association with air pollution as
a major motivation. For example, the often cited review by Siebert et al.
(2000) on the determination of the PBL height was initiated as a result
of the need to improve air quality assessments. PBL characteristics,
mainly its height, are used as an important input to air quality models.
Kotthaus et al. (2018) emphasise that the PBL volume is critical for
assessment of air quality. Surprisingly, the number of studies that ac-
tually examined the association of PBL characteristics and air pollution
concentrations is limited. Several studies investigated the PBL height
during severe air pollution events (Liu and Chan, 2002; Dupont et al.,
2016; Xiang et al., 2019). Uzan and Alpert (2012) and Nair et al. (2018)
studied the long term impact of daytime PBL height on the concentra-
tions of several pollutants at shoreline locations, while Wagner and
Schäfer (2017) studied the PBL impact in a street canyon scenario.
Recent papers by Miao et al. (2018) and Liu et al. (2018) examined the
relationship between the PBL height and PM2.5 concentrations in cities
in China. The association of the temperature lapse rate, a measure of
atmospheric stability in the PBL, and air pollution concentrations was
studied by Han et al. (2009) and Grundström et al. (2015). Most of the
studies which examined associations between PBL characteristics and
air pollution considered either the CBL (Uzan and Alpert, 2012; Nair
et al., 2018), the SBL (Han et al., 2009) or used methods that do not
specify the state of the PBL (Wagner and Schäfer, 2017; Miao et al.,
2018; Liu et al., 2018).
This work explores the association between two PBL character-
istics–its height and lapse rate–and the concentrations of several air
pollutants, making the distinction between different states of the PBL.
Several methods for PBL height determination were employed and their
association with air pollutant concentrations were compared. Our re-
sults contribute to understanding of the role of the PBL in determining
ambient pollutant concentrations. Practical implications for pollution
level assessments are discussed.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Study area
The study area is in central Israel, a few km from the Mediterranean
shoreline (Fig. 1). It is characterised by long, dry, hot and mildly humid
summers (daily mean temperature and relative humidity 25 °C and
65%, respectively), with intense solar radiation during the day (up to
1250 Wm−2) and rapid cooling during the mostly clear nights. Winters
are mild (mean daily temperature 14 °C), with the weather dominated
by irregular succession of high pressure systems, Red Sea troughs (a
northward extension of the Sudan monsoon low), both usually result in
clear weather, warm days and cold nights, and eastern Mediterranean
cyclonic systems, which result in cold weather and most of the annual
precipitation (long term annual mean of 520 mm).
Locally generated NOx and particulate matter (PM) are mainly due
to transportation, with additional NOx contributions from a natural
gas–fired power station (peak capacity of 428 MW) at the shoreline and
a cement production plant east of the study location. The background
ozone levels are titrated by locally produced NOx and VOCs, resulting in
relatively low ozone level in the study area and high ozone level
downwind. Particulate matter has additional external sources. The
major one is transport of secondary PM from Europe (Dayan and Levy,
2002; Asaf et al., 2008). In addition, naturally occurring mineral dust
arrives at the area, usually between October to May, by long range
transport from the surrounding deserts (Yuval et al., 2015), and is also
generated locally by wind associated with winter storms.
2
Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675
2.2. Data
2.2.1. Radiosonde and meteorological data
A radiosonde is a telemetry instrument which is lifted up from the
ground by a weather balloon and transmits to a base station continuous
measurements of the atmosphere. We used data of a radiosonde laun-
ched twice daily around 01:30 and 13:30 local standard time
(UTC + 2 h), by the Israeli Meteorological Service (IMS) following in-
ternational standards. The launching site is in the IMS premises (long-
itude 34.81E, latitude 32.0 N) at elevation of 31 m above sea level. It is
about 7 km southeast of the centre of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area,
7 km east of the shoreline and 3.5 km west of the western edge of the
Ben Gurion international airport perimeter (Fig. 1). Due to the airport
proximity and associated safety issues, actual launch time may vary by
up to an hour from the scheduled one. The observations are logged
every two seconds, which with average balloon vertical speed of 5 ms−1
results in about 10 m vertical resolution. Quite significant variations in
the ascent rate may occur in the first few second immediately after the
radiosonde launch. The variables observed by the radiosonde are height
above ground level, barometric pressure, temperature, relative hu-
midity, wind speed and wind direction. The Väisälä Radiosonde RS92-
SGP was used until November 2016 and the RS41-SG model has been
used since then. The instrumentation is calibrated before each launch.
The temperature response time (63.2%, 6 ms−1 flow and 1000 hPa) is
less than 0.5 s and reproducibility is 0.15 °C.
Surface meteorological data were obtained from the permanent
meteorological station located at the IMS premises. The station observes
at a 10-min temporal resolution the temperature, relative humidity,
solar radiation and precipitation at a height of 2 m a.g.l., and the 20 m
a.g.l. wind direction and speed. Cloud cover is observed in the same
location on an hourly basis and we used the observations at 00:00 and
12:00, local time. The IMS assigns the permanent meteorological sta-
tion data to the first (zero seconds) radiosonde record at the time of
launching. Due to some large inconsistencies, the first radiosonde re-
cord was ignored and the second (two second from launching, on
average at a height of 6.2 m) was always considered as the reference.
2.2.2. Air pollution data
The air pollution data used for this study were obtained from the
Israeli air quality monitoring array, operated under the supervision of
the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection. The stations use
standard and USEPA approved instrumentation and their operation
procedures follow EPA guidelines. The records are available at a
half–hourly temporal resolution and the data at the half–hourly time
point closest to the actual radiosonde launch were assigned to it for
joint analyses. Automatic calibration is carried out in the stations on a
daily basis in the early hours after mid–night and data are not logged
during this time. The selected air quality monitoring stations were those
closest to the radiosonde site and which had their calibration done in
hours not coinciding with the time window of the radiosonde
launching. NO, NO2, NOx and PM2.5 data are from the Holon station,
situated at the top of a school building, 16 m above ground, 1.1 km east
of Tel Aviv's main transportation artery and 5 km west of the radio-
sonde launching site (Fig. 1). The main local source of PM and nitrogen
oxides is traffic. Data from Decell LTD., which is based on continuous
onboard vehicle GPS readings (Chen et al., 2016), indicate that traffic
volume in the 250 × 250 m area around the monitoring station
amounts during working days to about 1000 cars and 50 trucks per
hour at the mean hour of daytime radiosonde launch, and to about 400
cars per hour and close to zero trucks at the mean hour of the night-time
launch. The weekend private car volumes are about half of the week-
days averages, with very little or zero weekend truck traffic. The O3
data are observed at the Ahisemech station, located on the ground in an
agricultural community at the southeastern edge of the Tel Aviv me-
tropolitan area, about 18 km from its centre and 12.7 km southeast of
the radiosonde launching site (Fig. 1).
Yuval, et al.
Fig. 1. Left panel: location of the study area in central Israel. Right panel: Locations of the measurement sites. The Bet Dagan radiosonde launching site is marked by a
triangle. The circle marks the location of the Holon air quality station where the NO, NO2, NOx and PM2.5 concentrations were observed and the square marks the
location of the Ahisemech air quality station which observed the O3 concentrations. Dark shadings denote residential areas, the light shading east of the Bet Dagan
launching site marks the airport and the red lines are major highways. The coordinates are of the Israeli New Grid projection in metres. (For interpretation of the
references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
2.3. Analysis methods
2.3.1. Initial processing
All the data sets went through a quality assurance process to detect
and eliminate erroneous data. Many radiosonde records during a
transition period in the logging software and instrumentation towards
the end of 2016 were found to be corrupt. Thus the data from 17
November 2016 to 31 December 2016 were not used. A small percen-
tage (< 1%) of the air pollution and meteorological data with values
beyond their physical range or showing variability not fitting the
measured variable were designated as missing. The observed radio-
sonde data were used to calculate a few additional variables needed for
the PBL height determination: the potential temperature Θ, virtual
potential temperature Θv, water vapour mixing ratio w, the gradient
Richardson number Rig and the bulk Richardson number Rib. The
mathematical formulae used to calculate these variables are provided in
the Supplementary Material.
2.3.2. Determination of the temperature lapse rate and the PBL height
The temperature lapse rate is the change in the observed tempera-
ture while moving upward through the Earth's atmosphere. It de-
termines the atmospheric stability and thus the vertical dispersion of
pollutants emitted at the surface. The temperature lapse rate was de-
fined as Γ = − ΔT/Δz where ΔT and Δz are the differences in tem-
perature and radiosonde elevation, respectively, between a certain
elevation after launching the radiosonde and the second radiosonde
reporting level (two second from the launch, on average at z = 6.2 m).
The lapse rate was always assigned to the radiosonde elevation z, and
we studied the lapse rate considering a range of fixed elevation levels.
In daytime we also considered the laspe rate between the surface and
the top of the superadiabatic part of the CBL.
The CBL height was estimated using two different procedures: the
bulk Richardson number method (Vogelezang and Holtslag, 1996;
Seidel et al., 2012; Guo et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Miao et al., 2018)
and the Wang and Wang (2014, henceforth called the W&W) method,
3
Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675
which is based on integrating the temperature and humidity informa-
tion using four widely used CBL height estimation methods (e.g., Seidel
et al., 2010).
The Richardson number is the ratio of turbulence associated with
buoyancy to that associated with mechanical shear. In unstable condi-
tions it is expected to be negative or small. Close to the CBL top it is
expected to exceed the critical value of 0.25, above which the atmo-
spheric flow is considered laminar. The bulk Richardson number Rib
(Eqs. 8 and 9 in the Supplementary Material) is a bulk measure of an
atmospheric layer. Following Seidel et al. (2012), Guo et al. (2016),
Miao et al. (2018) and Liu et al. (2018), we calculated Rib by con-
sidering successively for each radiosonde elevation level the layer be-
tween it and the surface. The CBL height hcblRb was determined as the
elevation where Rib ≥ 0.25 for the first time. We tested also a similar
procedure using the gradient Richardson number (see eq. 7 in the
Supplementary Material) but it's vertical profile was too erratic to re-
liably estimate the CBL height.
The W&W procedure considers as initial candidates for the CBL
height the elevations of the maximum vertical gradient of the potential
temperature, and of the minima of the vertical gradients of the relative
humidity, specific humidity and the atmospheric refractivity (Smith
and Weintraub, 1953; Seidel et al., 2010; Wang and Wang, 2014).
According to the W&W method the CBL height hcblW is defined as the
mean value of at least three of these candidate values which are within
less than 50 m one from the others. We adopted the Wang and Wang
(2014) procedure with some modifications specified in the Supple-
mentary Material.
Two different methods were used to estimate the SBL height: (a) the
temperature method, which considers the height of the surface tem-
perature inversion, i.e. the elevation where the positive temperature
gradient (temperature increasing with height) near the ground becomes
negative (Yu, 1978; Seidel et al., 2010; Pournazeri et al., 2012); and (b)
the Richardson number method. Given the high resolution of our
radiosonde data we considered the gradient Richardson number (hen-
ceforth Rig; Ohya, 2001, Zilitinkevich and Baklanov, 2002; Galperin
Yuval, et al.
et al., 2007) whereas previous studies which examined the association
between the PBL and air pollution used the bulk Richardson number
(Seidel et al., 2012; Guo et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Miao et al., 2018),
designed to be used with data at coarse vertical resolutions. We noticed
mostly very stable conditions within the SBL, with high values of Rig
close to the surface, decreasing with height to the critical value of 0.25.
This usually implies an upside down SBL (Mahrt, 1999; Ohya, 2001;
Mahrt and Vickers, 2002) and we considered its top to be the level at
which Rig ≤ 0.25. We also implemented the bulk Richardson method to
determine the SBL height but, as will be shown below, it proved un-
suitable for this purpose given the stability conditions in our study area.
The existence of a surface temperature inversion is a clear indication
of a stable atmosphere. In all cases (both day and night) when it was
detected, the PBL state was designated as SBL with height estimated by
hsblT (temperature method) and hsblRg (gradient Richardson number
method). When an SBL was not detected in a daytime record (the great
majority of cases) but a CBL was, the PBL state was designated as CBL,
with height estimated by hcblW and hcblRb. In cases of night-time launch
not indicating existence of SBL but with a clear PBL top detected using
the W&W method, we considered the situation to be a residual
boundary layer under which an SBL has not yet developed, henceforth
designated as an RBL, with estimated height hrblW or hrblRb.
All the initial processing of the data, determination of the PBL
characteristics, and the subsequent analyses were carried out by auto-
matic procedures coded using Matlab (Matlab, 2018) version
9.4.0.813654.
3. Results
Table 1 provides information about the number of successful laun-
ches, valid records and the number of different PBL state occurrences
during the study period. The number of daytime and night-time laun-
ches in the 1826 days of the study period were, respectively, 1812 and
1814, out of which 1768 and 1773 launches were found to have valid
records. During daytime, CBL was detected in 81.3% of the launches
and 18.7% of the time PBL was not detected (e.g., due to lack of
agreement among at least three of the methods used by the W&W
procedure). We ignored and have not used in any of the analyses the
five cases of daytime SBL detections. During night-time, SBL and RBL
were detected in 70.8% and 24.2% of the launches, respectively, and
5% of the time PBL could not be detected.
Figs. 2 and 3 show, respectively, typical examples of vertical profiles
of the meteorological variables used for the CBL and SBL height de-
termination. Some of the PBL height determination methods use the
gradients of the variables and Figs. S1 and S2 in the Supplementary
Material show the same examples but with the gradients of the vari-
ables also plotted. In Fig. 2 the CBL heights determined by all the five
methods are very similar (804, 763, 790, 790 and 790 m for the Rib, Θ,
RH, w and N methods, respectively), with the height by the Rib method
slightly higher than that by the W&W procedure. In Fig. 3 it is im-
portant to note the high values of the gradient Richardson number (i.e.,
stable conditions) before its first decrease below the critical value of
0.25. This might imply an upside–down SBL, where the turbulence
transport is downwards towards the surface (Mahrt, 1999; Ohya, 2001;
Mahrt and Vickers, 2002; Klein et al., 2016), opposite to the case of
traditional SBL where the turbulence is generated at the surface and the
Table 1
The number of successful launches, valid records and the PBL state occurrences
in the 2014–2018 study period. According to our definitions, CBL can occur
only in daytime and RBL only at night.
Launches Valid records PBL detected CBL RBL SBL
Day 1812 1768 1443 1438 NA 5
Night 1814 1773 1685 NA 429 1256
4
Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675
Richardson number increases with height. Upside–down SBL was as-
sociated with very stable conditions (Ohya, 2001) and indeed, the Rig
profile in Fig. 3b resembles in shape the profiles of Rig associated with
high stability shown in Fig. 6 of Ohya (2001). Fig. 3c shows the cor-
responding Rib profile, with values smaller than the critical value at the
surface but exceeding it at an extremely low elevation (13 m in this
case). The shapes of the Rig and Rib profiles shown in Fig. 3 are very
typical and appear in most cases when an SBL was detected.
Fig. 4 shows a typical example of a night-time launch when an SBL
was not present but a top of a ground–based RBL was detected. The
gradient of the temperature in Fig. 4a is negative and small in absolute
terms compared to the strong positive surface gradient of the tem-
perature profile shown in Fig. 3a, where SBL conditions were detected.
In Fig. 3b the Rig profile reaches very high values (stable conditions)
before decreasing below the 0.25 critical value at an elevation close to
that of the surface temperature inversion. In Fig. 4b on the other hand,
small values of Rig fluctuate wildly around the critical value. Fig. S3
shows the RBL height detected in the data of this launch using the Rib
and W&W methods. Typical to RBL conditions, the RBL top determined
by the Rib method in this case is much lower than the one determined
by the W&W procedure (193 m vs. 826 m, respectively).
Table 2 provides descriptive statistics of the PBL characteristics. The
lapse rate statistics in the table use the data of the 12th radiosonde
reporting level (24 s from launch, on average at 108 m). Lapse rates
calculated for lower (higher) elevations are more (less) extreme. The
statistics of the 108 m lapse rate are presented due to the proximity of
this elevation to the typical heights of both the SBL and the CBL's su-
peradiabatic sub–layer. We found that the 108 m lapse rate is always
strongly positive during daytime CBL conditions, being superadiabatic
in 90% of the cases. During RBL conditions, both positive and negative
lapse rates occur, with a median of 3.4 °C km−1. When an SBL devel-
oped at night, in 98% of the cases the surface to 108 m lapse rate was
negative, with very wide distribution reaching rates of −110 °C km−1.
In the remaining 2% cases the SBL height was much lower than 108 m,
with the lapse rate below it negative. As expected, the CBL height is
significantly higher than the height of the SBL. The highest PBL levels
were estimated by the W&W method during RBL conditions. Interest-
ingly, while the CBL heights by the W&W and the Rib methods are
comparable, during RBL conditions the Rib method results in much
smaller values. The SBL height using the temperature method is larger
than the height obtained by the Rig method in about 50% of the time.
However, the SBL height using the temperature method has a dis-
tribution with a very long right tail which results in 20%–30% higher
mean and corresponding percentiles. Both methods found a significant
number of SBL heights below 50 m (12% and 19% of the cases for the
temperature and Rig methods, respectively). Such low PBL height could
not be resolved by the coarse resolution radiosonde data very often
used for PBL climatological studies (e.g., Seidel et al., 2012). In more
than 10% of the cases the Rb value at the surface was already larger
than the critical value, effectively indicating zero SBL height. Moreover,
in 30% of the cases the SBL height using the Rib method was less than
10 m. This suggests that the Rib method is not appropriate for de-
termination of the SBL height in our study area and thus in the fol-
lowing the Rib method is considered only for CBL and RBL conditions.
Table 3 provides the median values of meteorological variables
observed during the radiosonde launch times for each of the three PBL
states. CBL conditions, exclusively at daytime, are characterised by low
cloud cover, high temperatures and fast warming, medium relative
humidity, high wind speed and a high standard deviation of the wind
direction, the latter pointing to considerable turbulence. The night-time
SBL conditions are characterised by mostly clear skies, cold tempera-
tures with fast cooling rate, high relative humidity, low wind speed and
low standard deviation of the wind direction. The RBL is also a night-
time phenomenon but it occurs more often in summer time (Fig. S4 in
the Supplementary Material), which explains the much higher tem-
peratures compared to SBL conditions. However, it is important to note
Yuval, et al. Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

a b c d e
1000 1000 1000 1000 1000

800 800 800 800 800

600 600 600 600 600

Z(m)

400 400 400 400 400

200 200 200 200 200

-4 -2 0 2 28 30 32 40 60 6 8 10 12 280 300 320 340

Rib ( oC ) RH (%) w (g/kg) N

Fig. 2. Vertical profiles of the bulk Richardson number Rib, potential temperature Θ, relative humidity RH, mixing ratio w and the refractivity N on 1 July 2014 at
12:32 (local time). The CBL height detected using each of the profiles is marked by a thin dashed horizontal line. The thick dashed line is the CBL height hcblW,
determined as the mean of the heights detected by the Θ, RH, w and N methods (W&W method). The dotted vertical line in panel (a) denotes the 0.25 critical
Richardson number, which determines the CBL height using the Rib method.

that the RBL is also characterised by significantly higher cloud cover,
much slower cooling rate, higher wind speed and much higher standard
deviation of the wind direction, all discouraging generation of stable
atmospheric conditions.
The monthly medians of the PBL height (W&W method for CBL and
RBL conditions, temperature method for SBL conditions), and the cor-
responding lapse rate between the 12th radiosonde reporting level
(average of 108 m) and the surface are shown in Fig. 5. The CBL and
SBL heights, and their corresponding lapse rate values show clear an-
nual cycles (Fig. 5a and Fig. 5c, respectively). In both cases the corre-
lation between the PBL height and the lapse rate is negative, with lar-
gest CBL and SBL heights during winter while the corresponding lapse
rates are smallest. The lowest mean CBL heights are found in spring
time (April), probably due to a large sea to land temperature gradient
and the resulting intense sea breeze, promoting lower CBL. The
minimum of the monthly median SBL height is in July, and the lapse
rate maximum values are in July and August. The monthly median
curves of the RBL height and its corresponding lapse rate are jittery
(Fig. 5b), probably due to the small monthly sample sizes of the RBL
(see Fig. S4 in the Supplementary Material). The annual cycle of the
RBL height seems to follow that of the CBL but with heights a few
hundred metres larger. The annual cycle of the lapse rate during RBL
has no clear pattern and is characterised by magnitudes much smaller
compared to the CBL and SBL lapse rates.
Fig. 6 shows the monthly medians of the air pollutants during CBL,
RBL and SBL conditions. Only data from working days (Sunday to
Thursday in Israel) were used to avoid confounding due to the reduced
local emissions in weekends and holidays. Very significant differences
can be noted between the curves of each pollutant for different PBL
states in terms of both concentration levels and annual cycles. While
PM2.5 concentrations during the day (i.e., CBL conditions) vary incon-
sistently between 15 and 20 μgm−3, the night-time concentrations re-
veal clear annual cycles, with highest (lowest) concentrations during
SBL (RBL) conditions in the winter. The 15 μgm−3 difference in the
January PM2.5 concentration between these two night-time PBL states is
on the order of the total PM2.5 annual mean, demonstrating the po-
tentially high impact of the prevailing PBL state in determining the
night-time PM2.5 concentration. On the other hand, PM2.5 concentration

Fig. 3. Vertical profiles of the temperature, gradient Richardson

a b c number Rig and the bulk Richardson number Rib on 1 January 2014 at
300 300 300 01:43 (local time). The SBL height detected using each of the profiles
is marked by a dashed horizontal line. The dotted vertical lines denote
the 0.25 critical Richardson number, which determines the SBL height
250 250 250 using the Rig and Rib methods.

200 200 200

Z (m)

150 150 150

100 100 100

50 50 50

8 10 12 0 10 20 2 4
T ( oC ) Rig Rib

5
Yuval, et al. Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

Fig. 4. Vertical profiles of the temperature, gradient Richardson

a b c number, Rig, and the bulk Richardson number, Rib, on 5 July 2014 at
350 350 350
01:31 (local time). A surface temperature inversion was not detected
and the PBL state was assigned to be an RBL, with its height de-
300 300 300 termined by the W&W and the bulk Richardson number methods (see
Fig. S3 in the Supplementary Material).
250 250 250

200 200 200

Z (m)

150 150 150

100 100 100

50 50 50

23 24 0 1 2 0 0.2 0.4
T ( oC ) Rig Rib

during the three PBL states between April and September are quite si- Table 3
milar. The median values of the cloud cover (okta), temperature (°C), the rate of
The monthly medians of the NOx and NO2 concentrations show surface temperature change in the five hours before launch time (∂T/∂t; ∘C
clear annual cycles in all PBL states, with highest values during winter h−1), relative humidity (%), wind speed (ms−1) and the standard deviation of
and lowest in summer. The annual cycle during SBL conditions is the the wind direction (StWD, degrees) during launch time for each of the three PBL
most prominent with concentrations during winter higher by factor of states. N is the minimal size of the variable samples for each PBL state.
4–5 compared to the summer. The NO concentrations are very low, N Cloud Cover Temp. ∂T/∂t RH Wind Speed StWd
virtually zero during RBL conditions, and during SBL conditions in
CBL 1431 2 27.3 0.82 51.7 4.1 17.6
March to September. In the case of CBL conditions (always daytime) the
RBL 426 4 23.0 −0.37 77.7 1.9 10.9
annual nitrogen oxides cycles can be partially explained by the higher SBL 1252 1 16.4 −0.68 82.3 1.4 6.9
summer solar radiation intensity and the resultant higher photo-
chemistry rates. However, at night-time (SBL and RBL conditions) this
explanation is not relevant and the character of the PBL may provide The monthly median O3 concentrations (Fig. 6e) during SBL con-
the answer. Certainly it is not the night-time PBL height that has causal ditions are very low with no annual cycle. Higher values with nega-
relationship with the concentrations of the primary pollutants since the tively correlated annual cycles are seen in the monthly median O3
correlations are positive (see Table S1). This is clearly demonstrated for curves during CBL and RBL conditions. This negative correlation points
SBL conditions, when the annual concentration cycles of all the primary to differences between CBL and RBL conditions in the O3 interaction
pollutants, PM2.5, NOx, NO2 and NO are very strongly positively cor- with locally produced NOx. O3 is a secondary pollutant with back-
related with the annual cycle of the SBL height (Table S1). That is, in ground concentrations of 45–60 ppb in Israel (higher in summer, lower
times of the year when the SBL is high, and presumably primary pol- in winter; Asaf et al., 2008). The daytime CBL O3 concentrations were
lutant concentrations should be low thanks to the large volume of the observed downwind from the main nitrogen oxides sources and the
atmosphere available for dispersion and mixing (Seinfeld and Pandis, daytime solar radiation is a strong determinant of their values, which
1998), their concentrations are actually high, and vice versa. On the are low in winter and high in summer. During SBL and RBL conditions
other hand, the annual cycle of the lapse rate during SBL conditions has (always night-time) the O3 concentrations are significantly lower,
a very strong negative correlation with the primary pollutant con- suggesting that their dominant determinant is titration of background
centrations (Table S1), pointing to the atmospheric stability during SBL O3 by the locally produced nitrogen oxides.
conditions as the most prominent, and probably the causative, factor in Figs. 5 and 6 show qualitative information about the seasonal trends
determining the primary pollutant concentrations. in the PBL characteristics and their impact on the seasonal variability of

Table 2
Descriptive statistics of PBL characteristics. The mean, standard deviation and percentiles were calculated for the samples of N valid values for each measure per each
PBL state. The PBL heights are given in metres. The lapse rate Γ, calculated using the 12th radiosonde record (24 s from launch, mean of 108 m), is in °C km−1.
Measure Method N Mean Std 5th 25th 50th 75th 95th

CBL hcblW W&W 1438 1013 624 287 531 865 1321 2345
hcblRb Rib 1426 1087 511 325 699 1049 1431 1987
hcblRb Rib 1426 1087 511 325 699 1049 1431 1987
Γ108 1438 21.8 10.8 8.6 14.0 20.4 28.4 41.0
RBL hrblW W&W 429 1216 657 333 711 1115 1609 2498
hrblRb Rib 404 248 292 0 50 129 352 892
Γ108 429 1.8 7.4 −10.8 −1.2 3.0 7.0 10.1
SBL hsblT Temp. 1256 122 72 42 64 108 160 266
hsblRg Rig 1131 102 59 23 57 89 138 215
hsblRb Rib 1072 34 69 0 4 15 33 128
Γ108 1256 −27.6 23.2 −71.7 −39.4 −20.8 −10.1 −3.1

6
Yuval, et al. Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

a Fig. 5. Monthly median values of the PBL height

30 (continuous lines) and the lapse rate Γ (dashed
1350
lines). (a) CBL conditions; (b) RBL conditions; (c)
1200 25

( o C/km)
CBL (m)

SBL conditions. The PBL heights during CBL and RBL

1050 conditions were estimated using the W&W method.
20
900 The SBL height was estimated by the temperature
750 15 method. The lapse rate was calculated between the
600 temperature at the 12th radiosonde reporting level
10 data (24 s from launch, on average at 108 m) and the
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
second level (two seconds, on average 6.2 m.)
b
2100 6

1800

( o C/km)
RBL (m)

4
1500
1200 2
900
-0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
c
0
140 -10

( o C/km)
SBL (m)

120 -20
100 -30
-40
80
-50
60
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

the pollutants. Table 4 provides corresponding quantitative measures of
the associations at the daily time scale, with the seasonality in both
pollution concentrations and PBL characteristics removed. The sea-
sonality was removed from the time series by constructing daily time
series of the seasonal variation using spline interpolation of the monthly
medians shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 and subtracting them from the
original data series. The entries in Table 4 are the Spearman correlation
coefficients between daily residuals of the pollutants at the times of the
radiosonde launches and the residuals of the corresponding PBL char-
acteristics. Spearman correlation was used due to the asymmetric dis-
tributions of some of the variables and the relatively small data samples
in a few cases (e.g., RBL conditions). Only data from working days were
used in calculating the correlations in Table 4 to avoid bias due to the
lower emissions in weekends and holidays.
The correlations of the CBL height and of the daytime lapse rate
with PM2.5 and nitrogen oxides concentrations are negative. This sup-
ports the common view of the CBL as a mixing layer within which the
dispersion of locally produced pollutants occurs. It must be noted
though that the correlations are rather weak (< 0.5), with the magni-
tude of the negative correlations of the CBL height estimated by the Rib
method somewhat larger compared to the corresponding correlations
using the W&W method. The daytime lapse rate is only very weakly
associated with the primary pollutant concentrations. The correlation
was also weak considering the lapse rate within the superadiabatic part
of the CBL (usually in between 20 and 100 m from the surface). The
correlations of the O3 concentrations with all the daily PBL character-
istics are positive but are very small in magnitude. The daytime O3
concentration is probably determined mainly by the intensity of the
solar radiation and the resultant photochemical reactions rates and less
so by mechanical dispersion in the CBL.
A more complicated picture is observed in the correlations of the
pollutant concentrations with the night-time PBL characteristics. The
correlations of the RBL height with PM2.5 and nitrogen oxides con-
centrations are smaller in magnitude compared to the corresponding
correlations during CBL conditions while the correlation with O3 are
significantly higher, especially considering the RBL height using the Rib
method. On the other hand, like with the correlations on the seasonal
scale, the SBL height is positively correlated with PM2.5 and nitrogen
oxides concentrations, and negatively correlated with O3 concentra-
tions. The correlations of the lapse rate with pollutant concentrations
during SBL conditions are always opposite in sign to those with the SBL
height and are much larger in magnitude (by about 50%, with the ex-
ception of the O3). The magnitudes of the SBL lapse rate correlations
with the concentrations of all the nitrogen oxides, the only pollutants of
which close to 100% are emitted locally in the study area, are sig-
nificantly larger than the corresponding correlations with any other
PBL characteristic for any PBL state. This attests to the prominence of
the atmospheric stability in determining the concentrations of locally
emitted air pollutants.
Table S2 in the Supplementary Material shows the Spearman cor-
relation coefficients between daily values of pollutant concentrations
and the corresponding PBL characteristics without removal of the sea-
sonal trends. Its results emphasise even more the finding in Table 4. We
believe though that considering the residuals, as in Table 4, promotes
additional insight about the association between the PBL characteristics
and the pollutant concentrations by eliminating the obvious effects of
the seasonal variability (e.g., in solar radiation).
The correlations shown for the whole study period in Table 4 vary
seasonally. Tables S3 and S4 show the winter and summer correlations
of the pollutants and the PBL characteristics, respectively. A few sub-
stantial differences can be observed between the seasons, which can be
summarised as (a) much stronger winter correlations between nitrogen
oxides concentrations and the CBL and RBL heights (especially con-
sidering the Rib method); (b) much stronger winter correlations be-
tween PM2.5 and O3 concentrations and the SBL heights; (c) much
stronger winter correlations of the pollutant concentrations (with the
exception of O3) with the lapse rate during SBL conditions.
Table 4 presents the strength of the statistical association between
pairs of PBL characteristic and air pollutant concentration series. This
analysis ignores the possible impact of additional variables that might
be associated with both variables in each pair. Table 5 provides results
of multiple linear regression models where the impact of an explanatory
variable and its relative strength of association with the dependent
variable can be assessed while accounting for the impact of all the other
variables. The most dominant PBL characteristics, meteorological
variables and the truck volume were used as explanatory variables to

7
Yuval, et al. Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

CBL
RBL
a SBL

g m -3 )
25

20

15

PM2.5 ( 10

b
50
NO x ( ppb )

40
30
20
10

c
30
NO 2 ( ppb )

20

10

d
15
NO ( ppb )

10

e
60
O3 ( ppb )

40

20

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Fig. 6. Monthly median values of PM2.5, nitrogen oxides and O3 concentrations during CBL, RBL and SBL conditions.

Table 4
Spearman correlation between air pollutant concentrations and PBL characteristics at the daily time scale after removal of the seasonal variability.
CBL RBL SBL

hcblW hcblRb Γ108 hrblW hrblRb Γ108 hsblT hsblRg Γ108

PM2.5 −0.21 −0.18 −0.05 −0.16 −0.04 −0.02 0.18 0.13 −0.30
NOx −0.34 −0.43 −0.16 −0.31 −0.41 −0.49 0.38 0.37 −0.60
NO2 −0.36 −0.44 −0.18 −0.31 −0.41 −0.50 0.37 0.34 −0.58
NO −0.21 −0.30 −0.09 −0.03 −0.14 −0.13 0.32 0.31 −0.50
O3 0.05 0.15 0.03 0.24 0.45 0.26 −0.23 −0.30 0.28

estimate the NOx concentrations. Similar models were constructed also
for the other pollutants but the NOx, emitted almost exclusively by local
sources, serves as the best example. The explanatory variable series
were standardised (by removing the mean and division by the standard
deviation) so the magnitude of the corresponding regression coeffi-
cients reflect the strength of the association between each of the
explanatory variables and the NOx concentration. Like in Table 4, the
seasonal cycles were removed from the data series. However, in this
case data from all days of the week, including the weekend, were used
so that the impact of the NOx emissions (represented by the truck vo-
lume) can be assessed. Table S5 provides the corresponding results
using the original series without removal of the seasonal cycles. During

8
Yuval, et al. Atmospheric Research 231 (2020) 104675

Table 5
Regression coefficients and their p–values (probability of the coefficient to be
sampled from a distribution with zero mean) of multiple linear regression
models estimating NOx concentrations using data from the whole study period.
The explanatory variable series were standardised so they are all non–dimen-
sional and range between zero and unity, with the coefficient magnitudes re-
flecting the relative contributions of the variables to the variance explained by
the models.
CBL RBL SBL
Coeff. p-value coeff. p-value Coeff. p-value
Γ108 −0.56 0.01 −5.61 < 0.001 −14.10 < 0.001
Truck volume 2.08 < 0.001 0.27 0.46 4.68 < 0.001
Solar radiation −0.58 0.003 NA NA NA NA
Wind speed −2.00 < 0.001 −0.75 0.11 −4.15 < 0.001
PBL height −1.52 < 0.001 0.69 0.19 3.01 < 0.001
daytime CBL conditions all the explanatory variables contribute sig-
nificantly to the regression model with large contributions of the wind
speed, truck volume and the PBL height, and smaller contributions of
the lapse rate and the solar radiation. During RBL conditions only the
lapse rate seems an important determinant of the NOx concentrations.
On the other hand, during SBL conditions all the explanatory variables
contribute significantly to the NOx model but the contribution of the
lapse rate is by far the largest. It must be noted that the truck volume
was available for us only as a mean value per day of the week and hour
of the day. The impact of its actual daily variations is not accounted for
and thus its relative contribution to the model should be regarded as an
underestimation. Notwithstanding, the very large regression coefficient
of the lapse rate during night-time (RBL and SBL conditions) most
probably reflects the prominence of the atmospheric stability in de-
termining the nocturnal NOx concentrations.
4. Discussion and conclusions
Five years of radiosonde records and corresponding air quality data
were used to explore the associations between PBL characteristics and
pollutant concentrations. Unlike previous works, we studied these as-
sociations while distinguishing between different PBL states. The
clearly lower concentrations of primary pollutants during CBL condi-
tions, occurring in daytime when local emissions are high, emphasise
the importance of convective processes in determining pollutant con-
centrations. However, unlike the common notion, the actual CBL height
is not a very strong determinant of the concentrations, especially in
summer time, when in spite of the relatively low CBL height in the
study area (Fig. 5), its correlation with the pollutant concentrations is
very low (Table S4).
In a substantial number of the night-time records we did not detect
the classic nocturnal SBL, characterised by temperature increasing with
height near the surface and topped by a low level inversion. In the
majority of these cases a PBL top could be determined using the W&W
and the Rib methods. We assumed these cases to be residual boundary
layers underneath which an SBL had yet to develop. This assumption
was corroborated by their occurrence during cloudy nights with slow
cooling rate in the hours before the radiosonde launch. The high pre-
valence of RBLs during summer time (Fig. S4), when sunset and the
onset of SBL development occur at a later hour, also supports this as-
sumption. It is surprising though to find so many RBL cases given that
even summer solstice sunset in the study area is at least 5–6 h prior to
the night-time radiosonde launch. The urban heat island of the Tel Aviv
metropolitan area might be the reason. It would be interesting to
compare the results to a similar study carried out in a more rural set-
ting. The concentrations of nitrogen oxides during RBL conditions, and
their correlation with the RBL height, are similar to those of the day-
time CBL and not to those of the night-time SBL. However, the PM2.5
and O3 concentrations during RBL and CBL conditions, their seasonal
variability and their correlation with the RBL and CBL heights are very
different. As shown in Table 3 and in Fig. S5, the meteorological vari-
ables at times that RBL was detected are very different from those
during either the CBL or SBL. Understanding them and the air pollutant
concentrations which they bring about merits further examination in
future when more data will be available.
We found the SBL height to be positively correlated with the con-
centrations of primary pollutants at both the seasonal and daily time
scales (Table S1 and Table 4, respectively). This belies the perception of
the night-time PBL as a limiting volume in which pollutants can dis-
perse (e.g., Kotthaus et al., 2018). The negative and much stronger
correlation of the SBL lapse rate and primary pollutant concentrations
suggests that the causal relationship is of temperature gradients driving
the significantly higher concentrations during SBL conditions. The po-
sitive correlation between the SBL height and the concentrations is most
probably just a confounding statistical association emerging because
strong negative lapse rates promote large SBL thickness. Attesting to
that is the high negative correlation between the lapse rate and the SBL
height (around 0.6 after removal of their seasonality and 0.8 using the
actual values). The strong negative temperature lapse rates during SBL
conditions suggest that the SBL in our area should not be considered a
mixing layer as the very strong stability results in stratification and
large vertical pollution concentration gradients even within the SBL.
This finding is in agreement with results of model simulations carried
out by Taylor et al. (2014), and with the measurements of Han et al.
(2009), Fig. 6) and Kwak et al. (2016), Fig. 5), which clearly show
much higher concentrations of traffic–related primary pollutants near
the ground compared to their values aloft under such PBL conditions.
The temperature lapse rate during SBL conditions was found to be
the PBL characteristic most strongly associated with air pollutant con-
centrations. We presented results of the lapse rate calculated from the
surface to the 12th radiosonde reporting level (24 s from launch, on
average at 108 m). As can be seen in Tables S6, S7 and S8, the lapse rate
considering this level is not necessarily the one most strongly associated
with the air pollutant concentrations. The selection of this level was due
to the fact that being close to the mean SBL height and the elevation of
the CBL's superadiabatic sub–layer, the calculated lapse rate approxi-
mately reflects the typically constant gradient of the temperature close
to the surface. Our results suggest that the lapse rate is the appropriate
parameter to consider while studying pollutant dispersion within the
PBL. The strength of its association with the pollutant concentrations
depends on the nature of emission (areal/mobile sources or point ele-
vated sources), and the type of pollutant (primary/secondary). We
showed that at night–time (SBL and RBL conditions) the surface lapse
rate is strongly associated with concentrations of pollutants emitted at
ground level. It should be noted that the surface lapse rate can be re-
latively cheaply and easily observed using two vertically spaced ther-
mometers. Thus a simple setting of thermometers at the bottom and top
of a water tower or a cellular microwave mast might provide in regions
similar to our study area more practically useful information regarding
pollution dispersion at night than costly remote sensing instruments or
radiosondes. The high correlation of the lapse rate measured from the
surface to high elevations during daytime CBL conditions (Table S6)
can be estimated by remote sensing or from meteorological model
output, and be used in statistical air pollution exposure models. Most
propbably separated lapse rates within the CBL sub–layers should be
considered for this purpose but understanding this issue is left for future
studies.
Many recent studies which used radiosonde data to determine the
PBL height (Seidel et al., 2012; Guo et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Miao
et al., 2018) employed exclusively the Rib method, stating it is suitable
for both stable and convective conditions. Following exactly the same
procedure for calculating the SBL height by the Rib method we found
that this method is not suitable for estimating the SBL height in our
study area. The SBL height determined by the Rib method was usually

9
Yuval, et al.
very low and in about 10% of the cases it indicated zero SBL height
while a surface temperature inversion could clearly be observed. On the
other hand, we found that the Rig method worked well and resulted in
SBL heights somewhat different but highly correlated with those found
using the temperature method. During CBL and RBL conditions, we
found that the PBL height using the Rib method is better correlated with
pollutant concentrations compared to using the W&W method. Our
results suggest that the Rib method is suitable for PBL height determi-
nation in unstable conditions but that care must be practised when it is
applied in stable atmospheric conditions.
With air quality in mind as an important motivation, numerous
studies investigated the PBL height using many different methods and
different instrumentation. A much smaller number of papers actually
studied the association of the PBL height and air pollutant concentra-
tions. This paper is the first to consider this association separately for
different PBL states, and to consider also the corresponding association
with the temperature lapse rate. Our results emphasise the importance
of the lower atmosphere structure in determining pollutant concentra-
tions but it clearly shows that the PBL height is not necessarily the
important variable to consider. We showed that during SBL conditions,
on both the seasonal and daily time scales, the SBL height in our study
area is actually positively correlated with primary pollutant con-
centrations. Moreover, the negative correlation which we found be-
tween the CBL height and pollutant concentrations on the daily scale is
weak, especially in the summer, and the correlation at the seasonal
scale is actually positive. A limitation of our study is that its results and
conclusions are based on data from only one location. Nonetheless, we
believe they may be relevant to other areas at similar latitude and
comparable climate. The detailed approach we presented should be
adopted when studying the association between the PBL and air pol-
lution.
Acknowledgements
This research was performed at the Technion Center of Excellence in
Exposure Science and Environmental Health (TCEEH), and was sup-
ported by an ISF research grant No. 0472714 of the ISF-UGC joint re-
search program framework.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2019.104675.
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