scholarly journals Use of Satellite Data for Air Pollution Modeling in Bulgaria

Earth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 586-604
Author(s):  
Emilia Georgieva ◽  
Dimiter Syrakov ◽  
Dimiter Atanassov ◽  
Tatiana Spassova ◽  
Maria Dimitrova ◽  
...  

Air pollution continues to be of concern for Bulgarian cities, mainly due to particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter smaller than 10 μm (PM10). There is public and expert interest in the improvement of two operational air quality modeling systems: the Bulgarian Chemical Weather Forecast System (BgCWFS) and the Local Air Quality Management System (LAQMS) for the city of Plovdiv. The aim of the study is to investigate the effects of satellite data assimilation in BgCWFS on surface concentrations over Bulgaria (resolution 9 km), to downscale BgCWFS output to LAQMS (resolution 250 m), and to examine effects on PM10 in Plovdiv. Data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) (MetOP satellites) for aerosols, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) were assimilated in BgCWFS using objective analysis. Simulation experiments with and without satellite data were conducted for a summer and a winter month. The comparison to surface observations in the country showed improvement of results when using satellite data, especially in the summer due to mineral dust events captured by satellites. The decrease in the normalized mean bias (NMB) over the two months was 43% (PM10) and 73% (SO2). The LAQMS estimated background contributions to PM10 in the city as 32%. The absolute NMB by LAQMS decreased by 38%.

Author(s):  
Diogo Lopes ◽  
Joana Ferreira ◽  
Ka In Hoi ◽  
Ka-Veng Yuen ◽  
Kai Meng Mok ◽  
...  

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region is located on the southeast coast of mainland China and it is an important economic hub. The high levels of particulate matter (PM) in the atmosphere, however, and poor visibility have become a complex environmental problem for the region. Air quality modeling systems are useful to understand the temporal and spatial distribution of air pollution, making use of atmospheric emission data as inputs. Over the years, several atmospheric emission inventories have been developed for the Asia region. The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the performance of the air quality modeling system for simulating PM concentrations over the PRD using three atmospheric emission inventories (i.e., EDGAR, REAS and MIX) during a winter and a summer period. In general, there is a tendency to underestimate PM levels, but results based on the EDGAR emission inventory show slightly better accuracy. However, improvements in the spatial and temporal disaggregation of emissions are still needed to properly represent PRD air quality. This study’s comparison of the three emission inventories’ data, as well as their PM simulating outcomes, generates recommendations for future improvements to atmospheric emission inventories and our understanding of air pollution problems in the PRD region.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 431
Author(s):  
Ayako Yoshino ◽  
Akinori Takami ◽  
Keiichiro Hara ◽  
Chiharu Nishita-Hara ◽  
Masahiko Hayashi ◽  
...  

Transboundary air pollution (TAP) and local air pollution (LAP) influence the air quality of urban areas. Fukuoka, located on the west side of Japan and affected by TAP from the Asian continent, is a unique example for understanding the contribution of LAP and TAP. Gaseous species and particulate matter (PM) were measured for approximately three weeks in Fukuoka in the winter of 2018. We classified two distinctive periods, LAP and TAP, based on wind speed. The classification was supported by variations in the concentration of gaseous species and by backward trajectories. Most air pollutants, including NOx and PM, were high in the LAP period and low in the TAP period. However, ozone was the exception. Therefore, our findings suggest that reducing local emissions is necessary. Ozone was higher in the TAP period, and the variation in ozone concentration was relatively small, indicating that ozone was produced outside of the city and transported to Fukuoka. Thus, air pollutants must also be reduced at a regional scale, including in China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
V. N. Lozhkin ◽  
◽  
O. V. Lozhkina ◽  

Introduction. St. Petersburg is the cultural and sea capital of Russia. The city is characterized by environmental problems typical for the largest cities in the world. It has a technical system for instrumental online monitoring and computational forecasting of air quality. Methods. The system maintains the information process by means of computational monitoring of its current and future state. Results. The paper describes methodological approaches to the generation of instrumental information about the structure and intensity of traffic flows in the urban road network and its digital transformation into GIS maps of air pollution in terms of pollutants standard limit values excess. Conclusion. The original information technology for air quality control was introduced at the regional level in the form of an official methodology and is used in environmental management activities.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Suter ◽  
Lukas Emmenegger ◽  
Dominik Brunner

<p>Reducing air pollution, which is the world's largest single environmental health risk, demands better-informed air quality policies. Consequently, multi-scale air quality models are being developed with the goal to resolve cities. One of the major challenges in such model systems is to accurately represent all large- and regional-scale processes that may critically determine the background concentration levels over a given city. This is particularly true for longer-lived species such as aerosols, for which background levels often dominate the concentration levels, even within the city. Furthermore, the heterogeneous local emissions, and complex dispersion in the city have to be considered carefully.</p><p>In this study, the impact of processes across a wide range of scales on background concentrations over Switzerland and the city of Zurich was modelled by performing one year of nested European and Swiss national COSMO-ART simulations to obtain adequate boundary conditions for gas-phase chemical, aerosol and meteorological conditions for city-resolving simulations. The regional climate chemistry model COSMO-ART (Vogel et al. 2009) was used in a 1-way coupled mode. The outer, European, domain, which was driven by chemical boundary conditions from the global MOZART model, had a 6.6 km horizontal resolution and the inner, Swiss, domain one of 2.2 km. For the city scale, a catalogue of more than 1000 mesoscale flow patterns with 100 m resolution was created with the model GRAMM, based on a discrete set of atmospheric stabilities, wind speeds and directions, accounting for the influence of land-use and topography. Finally, the flow around buildings was solved with the CFD model GRAL forced at the boundaries by GRAMM. Subsequently, Lagrangian dispersion simulations for a set of air pollutants and emission sectors (traffic, industry, ...) based on extremely detailed building and emission data was performed in GRAL. The result of this nested procedure is a library of 3-dimensional air pollution maps representative of hourly situations in Zurich (Berchet et al. 2017). From these pre-computed situations, time-series and concentration maps can be obtained by selecting situations according to observed or modelled meteorological conditions.</p><p>The results were compared to measurements from air quality monitoring network stations. Modelled concentrations of NO<sub>x</sub> and PM compared well to measurements across multiple locations, provided background conditions were considered carefully. The nested multi-scale modelling system COSMO-ART/GRAMM/GRAL can adequately reproduce local air quality and help understanding the relative contributions of local versus distant emissions, as well as fill the space between precise point measurements from monitoring sites. This information is useful for research, policy-making, and epidemiological studies particularly under the assumption that exceedingly high concentrations become more and more localised phenomenon in the future.</p>


Author(s):  
Miloslava Kašparová ◽  
Jirí Krupka

This chapter deals with modeling and metamodeling of air quality in the Pardubice region of the Czech Republic. From a regional point of view, the Pardubice district is the most problematic area in regards to air pollution. Concentrations of traffic, industry and power stations (Opatovice and Chvaletice) activities are the cause of this situation, although emissions of all pollutants have markedly decreased within the last ten years. A decrease in air pollution was achieved particularly by restriction and restructuring of industrial production, use of emission standards, changes in legislation in the area of air protection, etc. The mentioned air quality modeling belongs to classification tasks. It means the authors deal with the classification problem, with the creation of classification models (classifiers) and they focus on metamodeling (combining classifiers). Through the application of modeling and metamodeling the authors use selected algorithms of decision trees (C5.0, chi-squared automatic interaction detection and classification and regression trees) that belong to useful explanatory techniques.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 750
Author(s):  
Hoang Ngoc Khue Vu ◽  
Quang Phuc Ha ◽  
Duc Hiep Nguyen ◽  
Thi Thu Thuy Nguyen ◽  
Thoai Tam Nguyen ◽  
...  

Along with its rapid urban development, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in recent years has suffered a high concentration of air pollutants, especially fine particulate matters or PM2.5. A comprehensive study is required to evaluate the air quality conditions and their health impact in this city. Given the lack of adequate air quality monitoring data over a large area of the size of HCMC, an air quality modeling methodology is adopted to address the requirement. Here, by utilizing a corresponding emission inventory in combination with The Air Pollution Model-Chemical Transport Model (TAPM-CTM), the predicted concentration of air pollutants is first obtained for PM2.5, NOx, and SO2. Then by associating the pollutants exposed with the mortality rate from three causes, namely Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD), cardiopulmonary, and lung cancer, the impact of air pollution on human health is obtained for this purpose. Spatial distribution has shown a high amount of pollutants concentrated in the central city with a high density of combustion vehicles (motorcycles and automobiles). In addition, a significant amount of emissions can be observed from stevedoring and harbor activities, including ferries and cargo handling equipment located along the river. Other sources such as household activities also contribute to an even distribution of emission across the city. The results of air quality modeling showed that the annual average concentrations of NO2 were higher than the standard of Vietnam National Technical Regulation on Ambient Air Quality (QCVN 05: 2013 40 µg/m3) and World Health Organization (WHO) (40 µg/m3). The annual average concentrations of PM2.5 were 23 µg/m3 and were also much higher than the WHO (10 µg/m3) standard by about 2.3 times. In terms of public health impacts, PM2.5 was found to be responsible for about 1136 deaths, while the number of mortalities from exposure to NO2 and SO2 was 172 and 89 deaths, respectively. These figures demand some stringent measures from the authorities to potentially remedy the alarming situation of air pollution in HCM City.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Lancia ◽  
F. Rinaldi ◽  
P. Serafini

We describe mathematical models and practical algorithms for a problem concerned with monitoring the air pollution in a large city. We have worked on this problem within a project for assessing the air quality in the city of Rome by placing a certain number of sensors on some of the city buses. We cast the problem as a facility location model. By reducing the large number of data variables and constraints, we were able to solve to optimality the resulting MILP model within minutes. Furthermore, we designed a genetic algorithm whose solutions were on average very close to the optimal ones. In our computational experiments we studied the placement of sensors on 187 candidate bus routes. We considered the coverage provided by 10 up to 60 sensors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (17) ◽  
pp. 5970
Author(s):  
Hsin-Chih Lai ◽  
Min-Chuan Hsiao ◽  
Je-Liang Liou ◽  
Li-Wei Lai ◽  
Pei-Chih Wu ◽  
...  

A comparative analysis was conducted between the costs and health benefits of the Air Pollution Control Action Plan (APCAP), which can be implemented in any country to improve air quality and human health. In this study, air quality modeling was used to simulate several scenarios and implement the Kriging method to describe the PM2.5 reduction concentration instantly. Then, health benefits were estimated using the environmental benefit mapping and analysis program (BenMAP) with results from the air quality modeling and Kriging method. To estimate the priority of APCAP, 14 pollution control measures that cover point, mobile, and area sources of air pollution in Taiwan were analyzed. The results indicate that the health benefits of the Taiwan APCAP (TAPCAP) are generally greater than the technical costs. Thus, the implementation of this strategy may result in net benefits. In addition, the benefit-to-control cost ratio for health for the 14 pollution control measures was calculated. The results provide evidence to prioritize the implementation of air quality policies with a higher benefit-cost ratio.


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