Magnetic monitoring of PM filters from Air Monitoring Stations during the COVID-19 lockdown in Rome, Italy (March 10th - May 18th, 2020)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo Winkler ◽  
Antonio Amoroso ◽  
Alessandro Di Giosa ◽  
Giada Marchegiani
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Susceptibility ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Magnetic Measurements ◽  
Air Monitoring ◽  
Magnetic Minerals ◽  
Concentration Data ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Monitoring Stations

<p>An extensive survey of the magnetic properties of PM filters from selected air monitoring stations in Rome and other localities in Latium Region (Sacco Valley, Civitavecchia, Fiumicino) was conducted for outlining the impact of the lockdown measures on air quality.</p><p>The magnetic measurements highlighted a relevant content of magnetic minerals, mostly attributable to traffic related sources, on the filters from two stations in Rome and two stations from the urban areas of Civitavecchia and Fiumicino.</p><p>The PM filters from the Sacco Valley showed reduced concentrations of magnetic minerals, compared to Rome, however higher than the Castel Di Guido and Civitavecchia Sant'Agostino control stations.</p><p>The daily PM concentration data did not generally correlate with the mass susceptibility data, indicating that PM was often dominated by non-ferromagnetic contents, presumably due to wind-driven natural dusts, as stressed by the frequent anticorrelation between mass magnetic susceptibility and PM concentration.</p><p>In Magnagrecia air quality station, Rome, the average values ​​of the concentration depending magnetic parameters resulted about a half of those measured in 2005 on the filters from the same station.</p><p>From the Day plot, the filters with higher magnetic susceptibility values showed relatively coarse magnetite-like particles as the main magnetic minerals, ascribable to non-exhaust PM emissions from brakes.</p><p>This study confirmed that the interpretation of PM concentration during the lockdown is not straightforward and depends on many factors, such as natural inputs, resuspension and local conditions; anyway, magnetic analyses confirmed to be a valuable tool in PM source apportionment and concentration data interpretation.</p>

scholarly journals The Historical Trend of Air Pollution and Its Impact on Human Health in Campania Region (Italy)

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 553
Author(s):  
Domenico Toscano ◽  
Fabio Murena
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Average Concentration ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Concentration Data ◽  
Limit Values ◽  
Campania Region ◽  
The Impact

The Campania region covers an area of about 13,590 km2 with 5.8 million residents. The area suffers from several environmental issues due to urbanization, the presence of industries, wastewater treatment, and solid waste management concerns. Air pollution is one of the most relevant environmental troubles in the Campania region, frequently exceeding the limit values established by European directives. In this paper, airborne pollutant concentration data measured by the regional air quality network from 2003 to 2019 are collected to individuate the historical trends of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), coarse and fine particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters smaller than 10 μm (PM10) and 2.5 μm (PM2.5), and ozone (O3) through the analysis of the number of exceedances of limit values per year and the annual average concentration. Information on spatial variability and the effect of the receptor category is obtained by lumping together data belonging to the same province or category. To obtain information on the general air quality rather than on single pollutants, the European Air Quality Index (EU-AQI) is also evaluated. A special focus is dedicated to the effect of deep street canyons on air quality, since they are very common in the urban areas in Campania. Finally, the impact of air pollution from 2003 to 2019 on human health is also analyzed using the software AIRQ+.

scholarly journals Functional ANOVA approaches for detecting changes in air pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Acal ◽  
Ana M. Aguilera ◽  
Annalina Sarra ◽  
Adelia Evangelista ◽  
Tonio Di Battista ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Functional Data ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Functional Principal Component Analysis ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Pm 10 ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Monitoring Stations

AbstractFaced with novel coronavirus outbreak, the most hard-hit countries adopted a lockdown strategy to contrast the spread of virus. Many studies have already documented that the COVID-19 control actions have resulted in improved air quality locally and around the world. Following these lines of research, we focus on air quality changes in the urban territory of Chieti-Pescara (Central Italy), identified as an area of criticality in terms of air pollution. Concentrations of $$\hbox {NO}_{{2}}$$ NO 2 , $$\hbox {PM}_{{10}}$$ PM 10 , $$\hbox {PM}_{2.5}$$ PM 2.5 and benzene are used to evaluate air pollution changes in this Region. Data were measured by several monitoring stations over two specific periods: from 1st February to 10 th March 2020 (before lockdown period) and from 11st March 2020 to 18 th April 2020 (during lockdown period). The impact of lockdown on air quality is assessed through functional data analysis. Our work makes an important contribution to the analysis of variance for functional data (FANOVA). Specifically, a novel approach based on multivariate functional principal component analysis is introduced to tackle the multivariate FANOVA problem for independent measures, which is reduced to test multivariate homogeneity on the vectors of the most explicative principal components scores. Results of the present study suggest that the level of each pollutant changed during the confinement. Additionally, the differences in the mean functions of all pollutants according to the location and type of monitoring stations (background vs traffic), are ascribable to the $$\hbox {PM}_{{10}}$$ PM 10 and benzene concentrations for pre-lockdown and during-lockdown tenure, respectively. FANOVA has proven to be beneficial to monitoring the evolution of air quality in both periods of time. This can help environmental protection agencies in drawing a more holistic picture of air quality status in the area of interest.

scholarly journals Developing Relative Humidity and Temperature Corrections for Low-Cost Sensors Using Machine Learning

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3338
Author(s):  
Ivan Vajs ◽  
Dejan Drajic ◽  
Nenad Gligoric ◽  
Ilija Radovanovic ◽  
Ivan Popovic
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Quality Monitoring ◽  
Air Quality Monitoring ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Monitoring Stations

Existing government air quality monitoring networks consist of static measurement stations, which are highly reliable and accurately measure a wide range of air pollutants, but they are very large, expensive and require significant amounts of maintenance. As a promising solution, low-cost sensors are being introduced as complementary, air quality monitoring stations. These sensors are, however, not reliable due to the lower accuracy, short life cycle and corresponding calibration issues. Recent studies have shown that low-cost sensors are affected by relative humidity and temperature. In this paper, we explore methods to additionally improve the calibration algorithms with the aim to increase the measurement accuracy considering the impact of temperature and humidity on the readings, by using machine learning. A detailed comparative analysis of linear regression, artificial neural network and random forest algorithms are presented, analyzing their performance on the measurements of CO, NO2 and PM10 particles, with promising results and an achieved R2 of 0.93–0.97, 0.82–0.94 and 0.73–0.89 dependent on the observed period of the year, respectively, for each pollutant. A comprehensive analysis and recommendations on how low-cost sensors could be used as complementary monitoring stations to the reference ones, to increase spatial and temporal measurement resolution, is provided.

scholarly journals Modelling the impact of megacities on local, regional and global tropospheric ozone and the deposition of nitrogen species

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 12215-12231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. S. Stock ◽  
M. R. Russo ◽  
T. M. Butler ◽  
A. T. Archibald ◽  
M. G. Lawrence ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Surface Ozone ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Chemical Environment ◽  
Ozone Production ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Local Emissions

Abstract. We examine the effects of ozone precursor emissions from megacities on present-day air quality using the global chemistry–climate model UM-UKCA (UK Met Office Unified Model coupled to the UK Chemistry and Aerosols model). The sensitivity of megacity and regional ozone to local emissions, both from within the megacity and from surrounding regions, is important for determining air quality across many scales, which in turn is key for reducing human exposure to high levels of pollutants. We use two methods, perturbation and tagging, to quantify the impact of megacity emissions on global ozone. We also completely redistribute the anthropogenic emissions from megacities, to compare changes in local air quality going from centralised, densely populated megacities to decentralised, lower density urban areas. Focus is placed not only on how changes to megacity emissions affect regional and global NOx and O3, but also on changes to NOy deposition and to local chemical environments which are perturbed by the emission changes. The perturbation and tagging methods show broadly similar megacity impacts on total ozone, with the perturbation method underestimating the contribution partially because it perturbs the background chemical environment. The total redistribution of megacity emissions locally shifts the chemical environment towards more NOx-limited conditions in the megacities, which is more conducive to ozone production, and monthly mean surface ozone is found to increase up to 30% in megacities, depending on latitude and season. However, the displacement of emissions has little effect on the global annual ozone burden (0.12% change). Globally, megacity emissions are shown to contribute ~3% of total NOy deposition. The changes in O3, NOx and NOy deposition described here are useful for quantifying megacity impacts and for understanding the sensitivity of megacity regions to local emissions. The small global effects of the 100% redistribution carried out in this study suggest that the distribution of emissions on the local scale is unlikely to have large implications for chemistry–climate processes on the global scale.

To what extent does the environmental magnetism technique acts as a way of assessing the uptake of atmospheric particles by plants?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Letaïef ◽  
Pierre Camps ◽  
Thierry Poidras ◽  
Patrick Nicol ◽  
Delphine Bosch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Endemic Species ◽  
Fine Particles ◽  
Magnetic Measurements ◽  
Deposition Velocity ◽  
Environmental Magnetism ◽  
Air Pollutant ◽  
Atmospheric Pollutants ◽  
Area Index ◽  
The Impact

<p>Numerous studies have already shown the possibility of tracing the sources, the<br>compositions, and the concentration of atmospheric pollutants deposited on plant<br>leaves. In environmental geochemistry, inter-element and isotope ratios from<br>chemical element assays have been used for these purposes. Alternatively,<br>environmental magnetism represents a quick and inexpensive asset that is<br>increasingly used as a relative indicator for concentrations of air pollutant on bio<br>accumulator surfaces such as plants. However, a fundamental issue is still pending:<br>Do plants in urban areas represent a sink for fine particles that is sufficiently effective<br>to improve air quality? This is a very topical issue because some studies have shown<br>that the foliage can trap fine particles by different dry deposition processes, while<br>other studies based on CFD models indicate that plant hedges in cities can hinder<br>the atmospheric dispersion of pollutants and therefore increase pollution at the level of<br>emission sources such as traffic. To date, no consensus was made because several<br>factors not necessary well known must be taken into account, such as, PM<br>concentration and size, prevailing wind, surface structures, epicuticular wax, to<br>mention just a few examples. A first step toward the understanding of the impact of<br>urban greens on air quality is the precise determination of the deposition velocity (Vd)<br>parameter. This latter is specific for each species and it is most of the time<br>underestimated in modeling-based studies by taking standard values.<br>In that perspective, we built a wind tunnel (6 m long, 86 cm wide and 86 cm high) to<br>perform analogical experiments on different endemic species. All parameters are<br>controlled, i.e, the wind speed, the nature and the injection time of pollutants (Gasoline<br>or Diesel exhausts, brakes or tires dust, etc…). We can provide the PM concentrations<br>upwind and downwind of natural reconstituted hedges by two dustmeters (LOACs -<br>MétéoModem). Beforehand, parameters such as the hedge resistance (%) or the leaf<br>area index (LAI) have been estimated for each studied specie to allow comparability<br>between plants removal potential. The interest would ultimately combine PM<br>concentration measured by size bins from the LOACs with magnetic measurements<br>(ARM, IRM100mT, IRM300mT and SIRM) of plant leaves. The idea is to check whether it<br>would be possible to precisely determine in situ the dust removal rate by urban greens<br>with environmental magnetism measurements. Up to now, we have carried out on<br>different endemic species such as Elaeagnus x ebbingei leaves and Mediterranean<br>pine needles, the results of which will be presented.</p>

scholarly journals Numerical simulation of urban thermal plume merging

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuojun Mei ◽  
Chao Yuan ◽  
Wenhui He ◽  
Tanya Talwar
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Turbulence Models ◽  
Wave Radiation ◽  
Thermal Plume ◽  
Water Tank ◽  
Surface Cooling ◽  
Thermal Plumes ◽  
The Impact

<p>Densely packed urban buildings trap outgoing long-wave radiation, leading to reduced surface cooling and increased building surface temperature. In calm conditions, poor natural ventilation causes both thermal comfort and air quality issue. The buoyancy flow generated by heated urban surfaces is the main driving of the urban flow and pollutant dispersion. A 3D numerical modelling is conducted to investigate the thermal plumes merging and buoyancy-driven airflow in urban areas. The performances of four different turbulence models, i.e., two URANS (Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations) models and two LES (Large-Eddy Simulation) models are evaluated by comparing the velocity field with previous water tank measurements. Validation results show that all four turbulence models can capture the bending of thermal plumes toward the centre, and LES models provide a better prediction on the vertical velocity profiles, while both URANS models show underestimation. The plume merging mechanism is analysed with the high accuracy LES results. Both pressure difference and swaying motion caused by mean flow and turbulence are important for plume merging. The turbulence coherent structure of plume merging is analysed by a quadrant analysis, which shows ejection and sweep events could significantly change with the building density. A case study with complex urban geometry is conducted to show the impact of thermal plumes merging in the real high-density urban areas. The convergence airflow at the pedestrian level is estimated to 2 m/s under a surface-air temperature difference of 5 °C, which is comparable to wind-driven ventilation and beneficial to thermal comfort and air quality.</p>

scholarly journals Environmental monitoring of soil pollution in urban areas (a case study from Heraklion city, Central Crete, Greece)

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 963
Author(s):  
E. Kokinou ◽  
C. Belonaki ◽  
D. Sakadakis ◽  
K. Sakadaki
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Susceptibility ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Magnetic Measurements ◽  
Topographic Map ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Thermomagnetic Analysis ◽  
Geological Features ◽  
Digital Elevation ◽  
Elevation Model

Main scope of the present study is to combine topographic and geological data, magnetic susceptibility and thermomagnetic analysis in order to investigate the magnetic properties of the near surface soils in possible polluted urban areas. For this purpose, a power plant with a dense traffic net around it, located in the NW section of Heraklion city in Crete was selected to be the study area. Surface soil samples have been collected from the area under investigation and they were analyzed in order to estimate the spatial distribution of the magnetic susceptibility. Loci of high values of the magnetic susceptibility within the study area gave rise to further proceed to thermomagnetic analysis of the selected samples. GIS techniques were used for mapping the magnetic measurements on the various topographic and geological features of the area. The digital elevation model was created by the digitization of the topographic map contours (1:5000 scale maps). The combination of the above techniques indicate high values of the magnetic susceptibility especially in the northeastern part of the investigated area, possibly related to pollution due to the presence of heavy metals.

scholarly journals Emission of fine particles (PM2.5) from residential biomass combustion in Croatia and how to reduce it

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Mirela Poljanac
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Fine Particles ◽  
Biomass Combustion ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Wood Burning ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pm2.5 Emissions

Wood burning in residential appliances is very represented in the Republic of Croatia. It is a main or an additional form of heating for many households in rural and urban areas and is therefore an important source of air pollution. The choice of energy and the combustion appliance used in home have a significant impact on PM2.5 emissions. The paper informs the reader about PM2.5 emissions, their main sources and impacts on human health, environment, climate, air quality, and the reason why PM2.5 emissions from residential wood burning are harmful. Paper also gives an overview of spatial PM2.5 emission distribution in Croatia, their five air quality zones and four agglomerations. The paper analyses the sources and their contribution to PM2.5 emissions with the relevance of PM2.5 emissions from residential plants, the use of fuels in residential plants and their contribution to PM2.5 emissions and PM2.5 emissions by fuel combustion technologies in residential sector. Appropriate strategies, policies, and actions to reduce the impact of residential biomass (wood) burning on the environment, air quality and human health are considered.

scholarly journals Impacts of Current and Projected Oil Palm Plantation Expansion on Air Quality Over Southeast Asia

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam J. Silva ◽  
Colette L. Heald ◽  
Jeffrey A. Geddes ◽  
Kemen G. Austin ◽  
Prasad S. Kasibhatla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Oil Palm ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Transport Model ◽  
Chemical Transport Model ◽  
Oil Palm Plantation ◽  
Deposition Velocities ◽  
Current Constellation ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Over recent decades oil palm plantations have rapidly expanded across Southeast Asia (SEA). According to the United Nations, oil palm production in SEA increased by a factor of 3 from 1995 to 2010. We investigate the impacts of current (2010) and future (2020) oil palm expansion in SEA on surface-atmosphere exchange and the resulting air quality in the region. For this purpose, we use satellite data, high-resolution land maps, and the chemical transport model GEOS-Chem. Relative to a no oil palm plantation scenario (~ 1990), overall simulated isoprene emissions in the region increase by 13 % due to oil palm plantations in 2010 and a further 11 % by 2020. In addition, the expansion of palm plantations leads to local increases in ozone deposition velocities of up to 20 %. The net result of these changes is that oil palm expansion in SEA increases surface O3 by up to 3.5 ppbv over dense urban regions, and could rise more than 4.5 ppbv above baseline levels by 2020. Biogenic secondary organic aerosol loadings also increase by up to 1 μg m−3 due to oil palm expansion, and could increase a further 2.5 μg m−3 by 2020. Our analysis indicates that while the impact of recent oil palm expansion on air quality in the region has been significant, the retrieval error and sensitivity of the current constellation of satellite measurements limit our ability to observe these impacts from space. Oil palm expansion is likely to continue to degrade air quality in the region in the coming decade and hinder efforts to achieve air quality regulations in major urban areas such as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document