Source Attribution of Air Pollution in Europe

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2023) | Viewed by 1005

Special Issue Editors

Institute of Meteorology, Freie Universität Berlin, Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 6-10, 12165 Berlin, Germany
Interests: atmospheric chemistry; chemistry transport modelling; air pollution; greenhouse gases; emission modelling; source apportionment
Department of Climate, Air and Sustainability, TNO, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: particulate matter; nitrogen; ozone; chemistry transport modeling; air quality; source attribution

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

To design effective mitigation strategies to reduce air pollution exposure in Europe, a thorough understanding of the origin of air pollutants is required. It is well known that the impacts of both source sectors and source regions may vary largely between different locations and moments in time depending on meteorological conditions and the characteristics of local and upwind emission sources. Hence, obtaining a comprehensive quantification of the contributions of source sectors and source regions to concentration levels of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, ozone and other (emerging) air pollutants is a difficult task.

This Special Issue aims to collect a body of original research on source attribution studies in Europe. We welcome dedicated experimental studies that elucidate the contributions of single-source types based on specific source tracers or a set of sources using receptor modelling. Furthermore, we welcome model-based studies that quantify—as well as show improvements in such calculations—source contributions to air pollution levels. New modelling approaches employ different labelling and perturbation techniques with variable strengths and weaknesses. Relevant contributions include those from, for e.g., natural sources, anthropogenic source sectors, specific source regions, and local and transboundary contributions. Assessments may analyze and compare different time horizons, for e.g., annual means, seasonal variability, and/or episodes. The evaluation and comparison of different source attribution approaches is a topic of particular interest.

Dr. Sabine Banzhaf
Prof. Dr. Martijn Schaap
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • source attribution
  • Europe
  • receptor modelling
  • labelling
  • particulate matter
  • ozone
  • nitrogen oxides

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

30 pages, 8535 KiB  
Article
Implementation of an On-Line Reactive Source Apportionment (ORSA) Algorithm in the FARM Chemical-Transport Model and Application over Multiple Domains in Italy
by Giuseppe Calori, Gino Briganti, Francesco Uboldi, Nicola Pepe, Ilaria D’Elia, Mihaela Mircea, Gian Franco Marras and Antonio Piersanti
Atmosphere 2024, 15(2), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15020191 - 01 Feb 2024
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Abstract
A source apportionment scheme based on gas and aerosol phase reactive tracers has been implemented in the chemical-transport model FARM, to efficiently estimate contributions of different sources to ambient concentrations. The on-line scheme deals with all the main processes that the chemical species [...] Read more.
A source apportionment scheme based on gas and aerosol phase reactive tracers has been implemented in the chemical-transport model FARM, to efficiently estimate contributions of different sources to ambient concentrations. The on-line scheme deals with all the main processes that the chemical species undergo in the model, to enhance consistency with the calculation of bulk concentrations. The fate of precursors through gas-phase chemical reactions is followed by an efficient solver that determines their incremental reactivity, while the contributions to the secondary particulate species from their gaseous precursors is determined by assuming the thermodynamic equilibrium between the two phases. The paper details the new employed methodologies and illustrates the application of the apportionment scheme (based on 6 source sectors) to PM10 and O3, simulated on three domains of different dimensions in Italy, all sharing the same horizontal resolution and a common region (Lombardy). Spatial patterns of results show, on average, a relevant contribution of heating on PM10 concentration in January, with local hotspots dominated by road traffic. Contributions appear consistent in the three simulated domains, apart from the boundary conditions, influenced by the dimension of the domain. Hourly series of contributions to O3 concentrations in July at three selected sites show the dominance of boundary conditions, underlining the large scale of O3 formation. Finally, for PM10 components, the resulting sectorial contributions are compared with the impacts computed via the brute force method, showing that results are similar for elemental carbon and sulfate, while they are different for nitrate and ammonium, due to a different allocation of contributions and impacts between the methods. Each approach responds in principle to a different purpose, and their combined use provides possibly a wide set of information useful for addressing the different air quality management needs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Source Attribution of Air Pollution in Europe)
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