Estimate of potentially high ozone concentration areas in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula

This paper presents a study to determine the areas that could most probably be affected by high ozone levels in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula. Considering the years 1992 and 1995, cluster analysis was applied to some variables to group those days with similar meteorological states. Three different meteorological cluster groups were identified and their main features analysed. Additionally, wind direction was used to set up representative subclusters. Finally, representatives to the mean state of every subcluster scenarios were selected. Among these, several days were chosen to represent meteorological conditions that could most probably be associated to photochemical episodes and simulations with the TVM meteorological model coupled to a transport-chemistry module were carried out. Results show very high ozone production levels for some days. Thus, four impact areas could be identified, located both tens of kilometres away far from the city (in N, NW and E directions) or affecting the whole community of Madrid.