Part of a study by University of Utah researchers, the work will yield data on how weather conditions create inversions, where warmer air aloft holds cold air near the ground and traps pollutants in urban basins, a university release said Wednesday.

"Our study applies to urban basins around the world, any location with a lot of people and mountains nearby," John Horel, a professor of atmospheric sciences, says.

"Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tehran and Mexico City experience these winter inversions and cold-air pools," he says. "Unfortunately, one of the advantages of studying them in Salt Lake City is just how frequently they occur here."

"We get pretty exhausted launching weather balloons and driving mobile weather stations at all hours of day and night, but it has been a great opportunity to test our understanding of what causes the development and breakup of pollutant-trapping inversions," says graduate student Erik Crosman.

Students and volunteers were deployed during intensive observing periods to capture critical data that was combined with continuous automated monitoring of weather conditions around the Salt Lake Valley during the winter.

"We're not going to solve the air pollution problem," Horel says. "That may require additional regulation on industry and the public. What we're doing is improving the kinds of information that might eventually be available to decision-makers."

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