Influence of Weather on the Distribution of $${\mathbf{PM}}_{10}$$ PM 10 Coming from Controlled Sugarcane Burning Events in Colombia

Biomass burning produces aerosols that are transported and dispersed according to the atmospheric dynamics, which also determine their lifetime in the atmosphere. In the case of biomass aerosols, their lifetime is relatively short (5 to 10 days). Agricultural burning is one of the main causes of biomass aerosols; however, the burning of firewood, open fires, artisan stoves, furnaces, boilers for the generation of stationary energy, and burning in managed agricultural surplus soils are also sources of biomass aerosols. This study aims to investigate the relationship between weather variables and the distribution of $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ during a discharge of aerosol emissions from the burning of biomass in an equatorial (tropical) region of the Andes. From 21 controlled cane burning events, carried out between 13 and 23 h, $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ behavior monitoring was performed with data from 34 meteorological stations, 5 $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ stations, and satellite images (MYD04_3K and AERDB-L2 products). Several methods were used to identify the relationship of the patterns between particulates and meteorological variables, the Pearson correlation, the variation in time, and the wavelet coherence. The results do not show a linear relationship between the meteorological variables and $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ ; however, when the variation is performed over time, a behavior pattern is observed that shows a relationship between $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ and the variables wind speed and relative humidity. The wavelet coherence indicates a relationship between $${\text{PM}}_{10}$$ and the variable solar radiation and identifies high levels of significance in periods of 1–6 h that were not visualized by realizing the variation over time.