Estimating atmospheric radon deviation using statistical coefficients: Sulaymaniyah city, Iraq, as a case of study

ABSTRACT

The authors studied the atmospheric radon concentration with associated meteorological parameters variation during the dust events from July to November 2017. We obtained the meteorological parameters data in weather station of Sulaymaniyah city, Iraq. In the environmental monitoring plan, the atmospheric radon fluctuated from 15 to 48 Bq m^–3 around the mean value of 31.5 ± 7 Bq m^–3 within the summer. In autumn, varied from 22 to 46 Bq m^–3 with a mean value of 34 ± 12 Bq m^–3. We employed this to determine the radon level anomalously. Using the modified statistical coefficients, such as the residual deviation (RD), residual fluctuation ratio (RFR), F-test, and p-value coefficients. Among the atmospheric radon fluctuation values, particularly one anomalous (42 Bq m^–3) on 25 July was determined because the excessive value of the RD was 1.9 σ, and the RFR value was 66 %. Corresponding to our coefficients criteria, the minimum level of atmospheric radon (22 Bq m^–3) does not consider anomalous because of increasing wind speed. Based on this, our method for determining the atmospheric radon anomalies that are influenced by the missed factors beyond the mentioned meteorological parameters is accurate.

KEYWORDS:

• Atmospheric radon concentration
• meteorological parameters
• radio ecology
• Radon-222
• radon anomaly
• radon levels deviation
• regression coefficients
• Sulaymaniyah city
• Iraq

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the financial support for this study from the Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Sulaimani. We would like to thank both the Directorate of the Environment of Sulaimani and the Weather and Seismic Station of Slemani, Iraq, for enabling us to do this work and to use their data.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

The content found in ‘Estimating atmospheric radon deviation using statistical coefficients: Sulaymaniyah city, Iraq, as a case of study’ is original and has not been published elsewhere (even in the form of an abstract or preprint, or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis). The manuscript contains all sections, not split to up into several parts. The work does not contain any content that is illegal, abusive or constitutes a breach of contract, confidence, or commitment to secrecy. The authors declare that they have secured the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Authors’ contributions

The authors individually contributed to the manuscripts as follows; 1- Adil M. Hussein wrote the text of the manuscript, except for the ‘Climate and geological profile’ section. 2- Kamal O. Abdullah wrote the Climate and geological profile section. 3- Aziz H. Fattah prepared the figures. 4- Ranjdar R. Mohammed-Al collected the monitored and measured data. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Sulaimani – Ministry of Higher Education and Research – KRG state, Iraq.