For forecasting purposes the relations between the concentration of sulphur dioxide in the air and some basic meteorological elements such as air temperature and relative humidity, wind direction and velocity, and precipitation were studied using data from the atmospheric monitoring station of the Warsaw Agricultural University, located in Ursynów – a peripheral, southern district of Warsaw, and from the Geophysical Observatory of the Polish Academy of Sciences, situated in Belsk Duży, in a rural area. The studies covered the period of October 1997 to December 2002. The paper provides main statistical characteristics of SO₂ concentration; mean values of this concentration as dependent on wind direction, wind velocity and air temperature; as well as regression equations describing the connection between SO₂ concentration and meteorological elements, and correlation coefficients of these equations. The most frequent independent variables in the equations are wind velocity, air temperature and relative air humidity. The relationships for the urban area differ from those for the rural area. In the case of Belsk the correlation coefficients between SO₂ concentration and meteorological parameters are similar (in the range 0.41–0.60) whereas the coefficients for Ursynów show a wider variation (in the range 0.50–0.81).

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