干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Our general work has been dedicated to the problems connected with the influence of short-term changes of the atmospheric state on some medically unexplained human responses. What are the meteorological stimuli eliciting the transition between health and disease? There are many reports on the impact of humidity, winds or pollution on feelings of disease or discomfort. We suppose that the main influencing climatic factor, which could excite multiform biological reactions, is atmospheric electricity, E, whose parameters depend strongly on the content of the air column and on the meteorological conditions in this volume, especially along its ground path. A clear connection between wind speed V-w and coarse aerosol concentration N-T with electric field intensity E exists only for limited intervals of V-w and N-T. In these ranges, the mean correlation coefficients rho(E; V-w) and p(E; N-T) are usually up to 0.45. In quiet weather, rho is significantly larger than in the equinox seasons or in transferred weather situations. Strong winds or a considerably increased pollution level lead to fast and deep fading of E and even to principal changes in the form of its diurnal distribution from what is usual for stable atmosphere conditions, while weak air streams or a clear atmosphere have almost no influence on electric state variations. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.