Cartagena is a Mediterranean city in the region of Murcia with an important seaport, situated at 37º 37’ 08’’ N, 0º 59’ 11’’ W in Southwest Europe. This town is surrounded by mountains, Escalón de Cartagena, with a narrow valley towards the sea at its southern side. It is one of the more arid zones in Spain, with mild temperature due to the maritime influence, with a maximum rainfall of 300 mm/year. The high industrial development that took place in early sixties linked to a wrong distribution of the main factories around the city make the problem of pollution an important problem. In addition, the special topography and climatic characteristics of this area make the analysis very complex.
In order to settle the differences among data gathered by different classification criteria and show the presence of standardized behaviors, analysis of variance type III sums of squares has been carried out. Air pollution parameters used in this study were: nitrogen oxides, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and suspended particulate matter, as averages of each half an hour, from 1995 to 1997, measured at five sampling points of the Air Pollution Control Network of the City Hall of Cartagena.
Besides, this network has four meteorological towers, being wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity, pressure and sunshine the measured parameters, and a SODAR equipment. The relationship between air pollution parameters and meteorological data has also been studied. This paper presents the spatial and time distributions during the studied period.
Positive correlation has been found between ozone formation and nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and suspended particulate matter levels, with solar radiation and temperature. Higher concentrations of ozone were during summer period.