scholarly journals Impact of Vehicle Fleet Modernization on the Traffic-Originated Air Pollution in an Urban Area—A Case Study

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1581
Author(s):  
Piotr Holnicki ◽  
Zbigniew Nahorski ◽  
Andrzej Kałuszko
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Passenger Cars ◽  
Emission Mitigation ◽  
Emission Standards ◽  
Vehicle Fleet ◽  
Co Concentrations

The main subject of this paper is an analysis of the influence of changes in the air pollution caused by road traffic, due to its modernization, on the air quality in Warsaw conurbation, Poland. Using the Calpuff model, simulations of the yearly averaged concentrations of NOx, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 were performed, together with an assessment of the population exposure to individual pollutions. Source apportionment analysis indicates that traffic is the main source of NOx and CO concentrations in the city atmosphere. Utilizing the Euro norms emission standards, a scenario of vehicle emission abatement is formulated based on the assumed general vehicle fleet modernization and transition to Euro 6 emission standards. Computer simulations show a reduction in NOx concentrations attributed to emission mitigation of passenger cars, trucks and vans, and public transport buses, respectively. On the other hand, improving air quality in terms of CO concentrations depends almost exclusively on gasoline vehicle modernization. The implementation of the considered scenario causes an adequate reduction in the population exposure and related health effects. In particular, implementation of the scenario discussed results in a 47% reduction (compared with the baseline value) in the attributable yearly deaths related to NOx pollution. In spite of a substantial contribution of vehicle traffic to the overall PM pollution, modernization of the fuel combustion causes only minor final effects because the dominant share of PM pollution in Warsaw originates from the municipal sector and the transboundary inflow.

scholarly journals Integrating Modes of Transport in a Dynamic Modelling Approach to Evaluate Population Exposure to Ambient NO2 and PM2.5 Pollution in Urban Areas

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 2099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Otto Paul Ramacher ◽  
Matthias Karl
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
Traffic Emissions ◽  
Exposure Model ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Road Traffic Emissions ◽  
Pollutant Concentrations

To evaluate the effectiveness of alternative policies and measures to reduce air pollution effects on urban citizen’s health, population exposure assessments are needed. Due to road traffic emissions being a major source of emissions and exposure in European cities, it is necessary to account for differentiated transport environments in population dynamics for exposure studies. In this study, we applied a modelling system to evaluate population exposure in the urban area of Hamburg in 2016. The modeling system consists of an urban-scale chemistry transport model to account for ambient air pollutant concentrations and a dynamic time-microenvironment-activity (TMA) approach, which accounts for population dynamics in different environments as well as for infiltration of outdoor to indoor air pollution. We integrated different modes of transport in the TMA approach to improve population exposure assessments in transport environments. The newly developed approach reports 12% more total exposure to NO2 and 19% more to PM2.5 compared with exposure estimates based on residential addresses. During the time people spend in different transport environments, the in-car environment contributes with 40% and 33% to the annual sum of exposure to NO2 and PM2.5, in the walking environment with 26% and 30%, in the cycling environment with 15% and 17% and other environments (buses, subway, suburban, and regional trains) with less than 10% respectively. The relative contribution of road traffic emissions to population exposure is highest in the in-car environment (57% for NO2 and 15% for PM2.5). Results for population-weighted exposure revealed exposure to PM2.5 concentrations above the WHO AQG limit value in the cycling environment. Uncertainties for the exposure contributions arising from emissions and infiltration from outdoor to indoor pollutant concentrations range from −12% to +7% for NO2 and PM2.5. The developed “dynamic transport approach” is integrated in a computationally efficient exposure model, which is generally applicable in European urban areas. The presented methodology is promoted for use in urban mobility planning, e.g., to investigate on policy-driven changes in modal split and their combined effect on emissions, population activity and population exposure.

Two models and two emission databases – evaluation of the PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations modelled with WRF-Chem and EMEP4PL

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Werner ◽  
Maciej Kryza ◽  
Justyna Dudek
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
Chemical Transport ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Transport Models ◽  
Local Database ◽  
Chemical Transport Models ◽  
Pm10 And Pm2.5

<p>Some European countries in Eastern or Central Europe, such as Poland, have serious problems with air quality. High concentrations of particulate matter (PM) in winter are often related to high coal and wood combustion for residential heating. Meteorological conditions, i.e. low air temperature and anticyclones, provide favourable conditions for the accumulation of air pollution, rendering it harmful to people.  PM concentrations during the warmer period are much lower, however there are episodes with elevated concentrations related to e.g. long-range transport of pollutants from biomass burning areas. Policy makers in Poland put a lot of effort to improve air quality as well as inform and aware people on harmful effects of air pollution. One of the relevant tools which provides information on the past, current and future state of the air pollution are chemical transport models.</p><p>In this study we aim for validation of PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations from two different chemical transport models – WRF-Chem and EMEP4PL and two different emission databases – a) a regional EMEP database, and b) a local database provided by the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Pollution. Modelled PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations were compared with observations from Polish stations for the year 2018. The results show a clear seasonal variation of the models performance with the lowest correlation coefficients in summer. Higher seasonal variability is observed for WRF-Chem than EMEP, which is probably related to differences in calculations of boundary layer height. Application of local database improves the results for both models. For several months, the performance of WRF-Chem and EMEP is clearly different, which shows that an ensemble approach with an application of these two models could improve the modelling results. The differences in the model performance significantly influence the results of the population exposure assessment.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Source influence on emission pathways and ambient PM<sub>2.5</sub> pollution over India (2015–2050)

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 8017-8039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandra Venkataraman ◽  
Michael Brauer ◽  
Kushal Tibrewal ◽  
Pankaj Sadavarte ◽  
Qiao Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Particulate Matter ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Biomass Combustion ◽  
Anthropogenic Source ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Future Economic Development ◽  
Future Air Pollution

Abstract. India is currently experiencing degraded air quality, and future economic development will lead to challenges for air quality management. Scenarios of sectoral emissions of fine particulate matter and its precursors were developed and evaluated for 2015–2050, under specific pathways of diffusion of cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies. The impacts of individual source sectors on PM2.5 concentrations were assessed through systematic simulations of spatially and temporally resolved particulate matter concentrations, using the GEOS-Chem model, followed by population-weighted aggregation to national and state levels. We find that PM2.5 pollution is a pan-India problem, with a regional character, and is not limited to urban areas or megacities. Under present-day emissions, levels in most states exceeded the national PM2.5 annual standard (40 µg m−3). Sources related to human activities were responsible for the largest proportion of the present-day population exposure to PM2.5 in India. About 60 % of India's mean population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations come from anthropogenic source sectors, while the remainder are from other sources, windblown dust and extra-regional sources. Leading contributors are residential biomass combustion, power plant and industrial coal combustion and anthropogenic dust (including coal fly ash, fugitive road dust and waste burning). Transportation, brick production and distributed diesel were other contributors to PM2.5. Future evolution of emissions under regulations set at current levels and promulgated levels caused further deterioration of air quality in 2030 and 2050. Under an ambitious prospective policy scenario, promoting very large shifts away from traditional biomass technologies and coal-based electricity generation, significant reductions in PM2.5 levels are achievable in 2030 and 2050. Effective mitigation of future air pollution in India requires adoption of aggressive prospective regulation, currently not formulated, for a three-pronged switch away from (i) biomass-fuelled traditional technologies, (ii) industrial coal-burning and (iii) open burning of agricultural residue. Future air pollution is dominated by industrial process emissions, reflecting larger expansion in industrial, rather than residential energy demand. However, even under the most active reductions envisioned, the 2050 mean exposure, excluding any impact from windblown mineral dust, is estimated to be nearly 3 times higher than the WHO Air Quality Guideline.

scholarly journals Concentration Trajectory Route of Air pollution with an Integrated Lagrangian model (C-TRAIL model v1.0) derived from the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling (CMAQ model v5.2)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arman Pouyaei ◽  
Yunsoo Choi ◽  
Jia Jung ◽  
Bavand Sadeghi ◽  
Chul Han Song
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Lagrangian Model ◽  
Long Range Transport ◽  
Air Masses ◽  
Range Transport ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
Model C ◽  
Co Concentrations

Abstract. This paper introduces a reliable and comprehensive Lagrangian output (Concentration Trajectory Route of Air pollution with Integrated Lagrangian model, C-TRAIL version 1.0) from an Eulerian air quality model for validating the source-receptor link by following real polluted air masses. To investigate the concentrations and trajectories of air masses simultaneously, we implement the trajectory-grid (TG) Lagrangian advection scheme in the CMAQ (Community Multiscale Air Quality) Eulerian model version 5.2. The TG algorithm follows the concentrations of representative air packets of species along trajectories determined by the wind field. The generated output from C-TRAIL accurately identifies the origins of pollutants. For validation, we analyzed the results of C-TRAIL during the KORUS-AQ campaign over South Korea. Initially, we implemented C-TRAIL in a simulation of CO concentrations with an emphasis on the long- and short-range transport effect. The output from C-TRAIL reveals that local trajectories were responsible for CO concentrations over Seoul during the stagnant period (May 17–22, 2016) and during the extreme pollution period (May 25–28, 2016), highly polluted air masses from China were distinguished as sources of CO transported to the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA). We conclude that long-range transport played a crucial role in high CO concentrations over the receptor area during this period. Furthermore, for May 2016, we find that the potential sources of CO over that SMA were the result of either local transport or long-range transport from the Shandong Peninsula and, in some cases, from north of the SMA. By identifying the trajectories of CO concentrations, one can use the results from C-TRAIL to directly link strong potential sources of pollutants to a receptor in specific regions during various time frames.

scholarly journals Urban Population Exposure to Air Pollution in Europe Over the Last Decades

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Sicard ◽  
Evgenios Agathokleous ◽  
Alessandra De Marco ◽  
Elena Paoletti ◽  
Vicent Calatayud
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
World Health ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Ambient Air Quality ◽  
Air Quality Standards ◽  
The Eu

Abstract Background - The paper presents an overview of air quality in the 27 member countries of the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (previous EU-28), from 2000 to 2017. We reviewed the progress made towards meeting the air quality standards established by the EU Ambient Air Quality Directives (Directive 2008/50/EC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines by estimating the trends (Mann-Kendal test) in national emissions of main air pollutants, urban population exposure to air pollution, and in mortality related to exposure to ambient fine particles (PM2.5) and tropospheric ozone (O3). Results - Despite significant reductions of emissions (e.g. sulfur oxides: ~80%, nitrogen oxides: ~46%, non-methane volatile organic compounds: ~44%, particulate matters with a diameter lower than 2.5µm and 10µm: ~30%), the EU-28 urban population was exposed to PM2.5 and O3 levels widely exceeding the WHO limit values for the protection of human health. Between 2000 and 2017, the annual PM2.5-related number of deaths decreased (- 4.85 per 106 inhabitants) in line with a reduction of PM2.5 levels observed at urban air quality monitoring stations. The rising O3 levels became a major public health issue in the EU-28 cities where the annual O3-related number of premature deaths increased (+ 0.55 deaths per 106 inhabitants). Conclusions - To achieve the objectives of the Ambient Air Quality Directives and mitigate air pollution impacts, actions need to be urgently taken at all governance levels. In this context, greening and re‐naturing cities can help meet air quality standards, but also answer to social needs, as recently highlighted by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

scholarly journals Integrated systems for forecasting urban meteorology, air pollution and population exposure

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 855-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Baklanov ◽  
O. Hänninen ◽  
L. H. Slørdal ◽  
J. Kukkonen ◽  
N. Bjergene ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Health Effects ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Urban Air Pollution ◽  
Urban Air Quality ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Quality Information ◽  
Urban Air ◽  
Initial Development

Abstract. Urban air pollution is associated with significant adverse health effects. Model-based abatement strategies are required and developed for the growing urban populations. In the initial development stage, these are focussed on exceedances of air quality standards caused by high short-term pollutant concentrations. Prediction of health effects and implementation of urban air quality information and abatement systems require accurate forecasting of air pollution episodes and population exposure, including modelling of emissions, meteorology, atmospheric dispersion and chemical reaction of pollutants, population mobility, and indoor-outdoor relationship of the pollutants. In the past, these different areas have been treated separately by different models and even institutions. Progress in computer resources and ensuing improvements in numerical weather prediction, air chemistry, and exposure modelling recently allow a unification and integration of the disjunctive models and approaches. The current work presents a novel approach that integrates the latest developments in meteorological, air quality, and population exposure modelling into Urban Air Quality Information and Forecasting Systems (UAQIFS) in the context of the European Union FUMAPEX project. The suggested integrated strategy is demonstrated for examples of the systems in three Nordic cities: Helsinki and Oslo for assessment and forecasting of urban air pollution and Copenhagen for urban emergency preparedness.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Impact of a Wall-Type Green Infrastructure on PM10 and NOx Concentrations in an Urban Street Environment

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 839
Author(s):  
Maria Gabriella Villani ◽  
Felicita Russo ◽  
Mario Adani ◽  
Antonio Piersanti ◽  
Lina Vitali ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Urban Street ◽  
Microscale Model ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Active Filtration

Nature-based solutions can represent beneficial tools in the field of urban transformation for their contribution to important environmental services such as air quality improvement. To evaluate the impact on urban air pollution of a CityTree (CT), an innovative wall-type green infrastructure in passive (deposition) and active (filtration) modes of operation, a study was conducted in a real urban setting in Modena (Italy) during 2017 and 2018, combining experimental measurements with modelling system evaluations. In this work, relying on the computational resources of CRESCO (Computational Centre for Research on Complex Systems)/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure, we used the air pollution microscale model PMSS (Parallel Micro-SWIFT-Micro SPRAY) to simulate air quality during the experimental campaigns. The spatial characteristics of the impact of the CT on local air pollutants concentrations, specifically nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM10), were assessed. In particular, we used prescribed bulk deposition velocities provided by the experimental campaigns, which tested the CT both in passive (deposition) and in active (filtration) mode of operation. Our results showed that the PM10 and NOx concentration reductions reach from more than 0.1% up to about 0.8% within an area of 10 × 20 m2 around the infrastructure, when the green infrastructure operates in passive mode. In filtration mode the CT exhibited higher performances in the abatement of PM10 concentrations (between 1.5% and 15%), within approximately the same area. We conclude that CTs may find an application in air quality hotspots within specific urban settings (i.e., urban street canyons) where a very localized reduction of pollutants concentration during rush hours might be of interest to limit population exposure. The optimization of the spatial arrangement of CT modules to increment the “clean air zone” is a factor to be investigated in the ongoing development of the CT technology.

scholarly journals Integrated systems for forecasting urban meteorology, air pollution and population exposure

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1867-1913 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Baklanov ◽  
O. Hänninen ◽  
L. H. Slørdal ◽  
J. Kukkonen ◽  
N. Bjergene ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Health Effects ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Urban Air Pollution ◽  
Urban Air Quality ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Quality Information ◽  
Urban Air ◽  
Initial Development

Abstract. Urban air pollution is associated with significant adverse health effects. Model-based abatement strategies are required and developed for the growing urban populations. In the initial development stage, these are focussed on exceedances of air quality standards caused by high short-term pollutant concentrations. Prediction of health effects and implementation of urban air quality information and abatement systems require accurate forecasting of air pollution episodes and population exposure, including modelling of emissions, meteorology, atmospheric dispersion and chemical reaction of pollutants, population mobility, and indoor-outdoor relationship of the pollutants. In the past, these different areas have been treated separately by different models and even institutions. Progress in computer resources and ensuing improvements in numerical weather prediction, air chemistry, and exposure modelling recently allow a unification and integration of the disjunctive models and approaches. The current work presents a novel approach that integrates the latest developments in meteorological, air quality, and population exposure modelling into Urban Air Quality Information and Forecasting Systems (UAQIFS) in the context of the European Union FUMAPEX project. The suggested integrated strategy is demonstrated for examples of the systems in three Nordic cities: Helsinki and Oslo for assessment and forecasting of urban air pollution and Copenhagen for urban emergency preparedness.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document