Air pollution forecast for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2015 and 2020

摘要

Air pollution has deteriorated considerably the health of millions of people in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) due to high levels of emissions which caused more than 90% of children under the age of 5 years old to suffer from different respiratory illnesses in the city. The objectives of this research are to study the formation of the pollution plume over the city during a 3-day episode in February 2006 and to study two abatement strategies of air pollution for HCMC. The meteorology in HCMC is influenced by local phenomena and global phenomenon which create convergence fronts over and cause the formation of the plume of pollutants over the city. The plume of Ozone (O₃) is developed in the north-western part of the city. The models successfully simulated these phenomena and their results are in good agreement with measurements. Two abatement strategies are studied in this work to help the local government who will make decisions for managing air quality in HCMC. For making a better-informed decision, the probabilistic estimate for the photochemical model is carried out in this research. The Monte Carlo method that is applied in this research for the uncertainty analyses is an efficient method of producing a probabilistic output from the photochemical model. The results of these two abatement strategies showed that if the local government follows the emission control plan: (1) for 2015, the O₃ concentration in 2015 will be similar to the present O₃ concentration. (2) For 2020, the O₃ concentration in 2020 will decrease of around 10–30% of O₃ in comparison to the actual level.