Spatial monitoring of particulate matter leeward and in extensive coverage of coal mine ventilation shafts in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (SMUGA)

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Barbara Harm-Altstädter
• Subject Area: Atmospheric Science
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 553877405

The research proposal SMUGA (Spatial monitoring of particulate matter leeward and in extensive coverage of coal mine ventilation shafts in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin) aims at achieving a better understanding of the spatial distribution and sizes of aerosol particles that are generated by coal mining activity in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB), which serves as one of the largest producer of coal as energy source in Europe. Coal dust is produced during all steps of the mining process, so that air pollutants, implying particulate matter (PM) of different sizes and black carbon (BC), are intensively emitted into the ambient atmosphere. It is of special significance to carry out fundamental analyses regarding the spatial variability of the emissions, as the air pollutants cause negative impacts on human beings, on the environment and also have a strong influence on the Earth’s radiation budget. At the present stage, far-reaching knowledge gaps exist in relation to the level of air pollution according to number concentrations and size distribution of aerosol particles and their interactions on the radiation budget close to plumes and at larger distance away from hot spots. This is even less investigated in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) that is characterised by turbulence, which forces the shape, transport and mixing of the air pollutants. These research lacks exist mainly as a result of missing devices that allow monitoring data with high temporal and high precision in the three-dimensional distribution. The method applied here makes use of a data set obtained with the helicopter borne measurement platform HELiPOD. It enables investigating meteorological parameters (wind, humidity, temperature), radiation properties, trace gases, visible representation via cameras and infrared sensors in parallel to observations of aerosol particles of different sizes and BC. With HELiPOD, 17 measurement flights were performed downwind of four different coal mine ventilation shafts and further away in the USCB and during varying times of the day and two different seasons (summer and autumn) in 2022. The findings of the available data set address studying interactions between dynamically driven properties, radiation budget, and the spatial variability of aerosol particles at different scales, ranging from local (a few km²) to regional (several 10 km²) processes that are urgently needed for closing knowledge lacks between top-down and bottom-up approaches. Therefore, research flights at close distance to ventilation shafts are used to study the local impacts of the air pollutants, especially in relation to the prevailing wind field. Other flight segments are clustered to determine the ABL stability, the level of turbulent kinetic energy, the aerosol optical depth during clear sky, and to analyse the correlation with ozone on the spatial variability of aerosol particles according to similar surface properties to identify additional emission sources.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants