She explains that most of the pollution comes from people’s daily activities – mainly from road transport. “The winter season is over, so is road spraying. Under the influence of road traffic, the dry particles on the roads rise up to the breathing zone of people, and the observation stations record this pollution,” explains Indriksone.
She points out that there are two air quality monitoring stations in Riga – one on Valdemāra Street, and the other – in Kronvalda Park. Both monitoring devices recorded increased pollution in the capital on the morning of Tuesday, April 2, which also coincided with the morning rush hour, when people were going to work.
“The transport pollution station, located on Valdemāra Street, shows that pollution has decreased at the moment,” said the representative of LVĜMC on Tuesday afternoon, around 1 p.m.
Indrikson also predicts that the pollution level will drop in the coming hours. As the latest forecasts show that the wind is picking up, precipitation is approaching Latvia, which is the “fastest purifier of polluted air”.
Returning to the dust of the Sahara desert, Indriksone states that the forecasts of the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service for Latvia predicted a dust concentration of 30 to 50 micrograms per cubic meter. “It’s a forecast. Roughly, we can say that a third or a quarter of all pollution in Latvia comes directly from the Sahara,” says the LVĜMC specialist.
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Already now, the cloud of desert dust is moving away from the space of Latvia, towards Russia, where it gradually disperses, its concentration decreases.
So far, the Saharan dust cloud has been detected in Latvia, for example, in February 2021, when even two episodes were recorded. “At the end of February, it rained then, particles of the Sahara desert came to the surface of the earth – they were oily sand. I personally fixed them on my car,” recalls Indriksone.
The “tv3.lv” portal already reported that on the morning of Tuesday, April 2, the concentration of suspended solid particles PM10, or dust with a diameter of up to 10 micrometers, was 187 micrograms per cubic meter on Kronvalda Boulevard and 237 micrograms per cubic meter on Krišjāņa Valdemāra Street.
Air quality becomes particularly poor when the daily average concentration of PM10 exceeds 150 micrograms per cubic meter.
Much of the air pollution comes from Saharan dust, as well as local sources of pollution. Air quality is poor in most parts of Latvia, especially in cities.
