scope:

In connection with air pollution control, it is necessary to have knowledge of the temporal and spatial distribution of the meteorological quantities characteristic of the atmosphere. In this regard, air temperature is particularly important because all atmospheric motion processes and thus the dispersion of pollutants are directly influenced by its spatial distribution. This includes plume rise and the determination of dispersion classes by vertical temperature gradients. Moreover, a lot of methods for measuring ambient air quality are influenced by air temperature.

Temperature measurements for questions concerning air pollution prevention (see also Table 5 in Section 7.3) especially serve the following purposes:

• to describe the atmospheric stability,

• to determine inversions,

• to assess ambient air situations,

• to investigate the thermal state in areas with air pollution and bioclimatic impact (e.g. heat islands and cold air corridors).

For these tasks, continuous temperature measurements with electrical sensors are useful. Therefore, resistance thermometers with remote transmission and electronic data processing are almost exclusively used in measuring networks. For the determination of vertical temperature profiles, not only radiosondes (VDI 3786 Part 8), but also remote sensing methods (VDI 3786 Part 18) are used.