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Air quality in Europe — 2019 report
This report presents an updated overview and analysis of air quality in Europe from 2000 to 2017. It reviews the progress made towards meeting the air quality standards established in the two EU Ambient Air Quality Directives and towards the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines (AQGs). It also presents the latest findings and estimates of population and ecosystem exposure to the air pollutants with the greatest impacts.
Publications Office of the European Union
2019
2019
The Mineral Aerosol Profiling from Infrared Radiances (MAPIR) algorithm retrieves vertical dust concentration profiles from cloud-free Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) thermal infrared (TIR) radiances using Rodgers' optimal estimation method (OEM). We describe the new version 4.1 and evaluation results. Main differences with respect to previous versions are the Levenberg–Marquardt modification of the OEM, the use of the logarithm of the concentration in the retrieval and the use of Radiative Transfer for TOVS (RTTOV) for in-line radiative transfer calculations. The dust aerosol concentrations are retrieved in seven 1 km thick layers centered at 0.5 to 6.5 km. A global data set of the daily dust distribution was generated with MAPIR v4.1 covering September 2007 to June 2018, with further extensions planned every 6 months. The post-retrieval quality filters reject about 16 % of the retrievals, a huge improvement with respect to the previous versions in which up to 40 % of the retrievals were of bad quality. The median difference between the observed and fitted spectra of the good-quality retrievals is 0.32 K, with lower values over oceans. The information content of the retrieved profiles shows a dependence on the total aerosol load due to the assumption of a lognormal state vector. The median degrees of freedom in dusty scenes (min 10 µm AOD of 0.5) is 1.4. An evaluation of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) obtained from the integrated MAPIR v4.1 profiles was performed against 72 AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) stations. The MAPIR AOD correlates well with the ground-based data, with a mean correlation coefficient of 0.66 and values as high as 0.88. Overall, there is a mean AOD (550 nm) positive bias of only 0.04 with respect to AERONET, which is an extremely good result. The previous versions of MAPIR were known to largely overestimate AOD (about 0.28 for v3). A second evaluation exercise was performed comparing the mean aerosol layer altitude from MAPIR with the mean dust altitude from Cloud–Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). A small underestimation was found, with a mean difference of about 350 m (standard deviation of about 1 km) with respect to the CALIOP cumulative extinction altitude, which is again considered very good as the vertical resolution of MAPIR is 1 km. In the comparisons against AERONET and CALIOP, a dependence of MAPIR on the quality of the temperature profiles used in the retrieval is observed. Finally, a qualitative comparison of dust aerosol concentration profiles was done against lidar measurements from two ground-based stations (M'Bour and Al Dhaid) and from the Cloud–Aerosol Transport System (CATS) instrument on board the International Space Station (ISS). MAPIR v4.1 showed the ability to detect dust plumes at the same time and with a similar extent as the lidar instruments. This new MAPIR version shows a great improvement of the accuracy of the aerosol profile retrievals with respect to previous versions, especially so for the integrated AOD. It now offers a unique 3-D dust data set, which can be used to gain more insight into the transport and emission processes of mineral dust aerosols.
2019
2019
Recent Trends in Maintenance Costs for Façades Due to Air Pollution in the Oslo Quadrature, Norway
This study assesses changes since 1980 in the maintenance cost of the façades of the historical 17th to 19th century buildings of the Oslo Quadrature, Norway, due to atmospheric chemical wear, including the influence of air pollution. Bottom up estimations by exposure–response functions for an SO2 dominated situation reported in the literature for 1979 and 1995 were compared with calculations for the present (2002–2014) multi-pollutant situation. The present maintenance cost, relative to the total façade area, due to atmospheric wear and soiling was found to be about 1.6 Euro/m2 per year. The exposure to local air pollution, mainly particulate matter and NOx gases, contributed to 0.6 Euro/m2 (38%), of which the cost due to wear of renderings was about 0.4 Euro/m2 (22%), that due to the cleaning of glass was 0.2 Euro/m2 (11%), and that due to wear of other façade materials was 0.07 Euro/m2 (5%). The maintenance cost due to the atmospheric wear was found to be about 3.5%, and that due to the local air pollution about 1.1% of the total municipal building maintenance costs. The present (2002–2014) maintenance costs, relative to the areas of the specific materials, due to atmospheric wear are probably the highest for painted steel surfaces, about 8–10 Euro/m2, then about 2 Euro/m2 for façade cleaning and the maintenance of rendering, and down to 0.3 Euro/m2 for the maintenance of copper roofs. These costs should be adjusted with the importance of the wear relative to other reasons for the façade maintenance.
2019
2019
Non-target screening (NTS) including suspect screening with high resolution mass spectrometry has already shown its feasibility in detecting and identifying emerging contaminants, which subsequently triggered exposure mitigating measures. NTS has a large potential for tasks such as effective evaluation of regulations for safe marketing of substances and products, prioritization of substances for monitoring programmes and assessment of environmental quality. To achieve this, a further development of NTS methodology is required, including: (i) harmonized protocols and quality requirements, (ii) infrastructures for efficient data management, data evaluation and data sharing and (iii) sufficient resources and appropriately trained personnel in the research and regulatory communities in Europe. Recommendations for achieving these three requirements are outlined in the following discussion paper. In particular, in order to facilitate compound identification it is recommended that the relevant information for interpretation of mass spectra, as well as about the compounds usage and production tonnages, should be made accessible to the scientific community (via open-access databases). For many purposes, NTS should be implemented in combination with effect-based methods to focus on toxic chemicals.
2019
2019
Contaminants in Atlantic walruses Part 2: Relationships with endocrine and immune systems
Marine mammals in the Barents Sea region have among the highest levels of contaminants recorded in the Arctic and the Atlantic walrus (<i>Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus</i>) is one of the most contaminated species within this region. We therefore investigated the relationships bewteen blubber concentrations of lipophilic persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and plasma concentrations of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and markers of endocrine and immune functions in adult male Atlantic walruses (n = 38) from Svalbard, Norway. To do so, we assessed plasma concentrations of five forms of thyroid hormones and transcript levels of genes related to the endocrine and immune systems as endpoints; transcript levels of seven genes in blubber and 23 genes in blood cells were studied. Results indicated that plasma total thyroxine (TT4) concentrations decreased with increasing blubber concentrations of lipophilic POPs. Blood cell transcript levels of genes involved in the function of T and B cells (FC like receptors 2 and 5, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte associated protein 4 and protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22) were increased with plasma PFAS concentrations. These results suggest that changes in thyroid and immune systems in adult male walruses are linked to current levels of contaminant exposure.
2019
We present an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) dedicated to the evaluation of the added value of the Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5P missions for tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Sentinel-4 is a geostationary (GEO) mission covering the European continent, providing observations with high temporal resolution (hourly). Sentinel-5P is a low Earth orbit (LEO) mission providing daily observations with a global coverage. The OSSE experiment has been carefully designed, with separate models for the simulation of observations and for the assimilation experiments and with conservative estimates of the total observation uncertainties. In the experiment we simulate Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5P tropospheric NO2 columns and surface ozone concentrations at 7 by 7 km resolution over Europe for two 3-month summer and winter periods. The synthetic observations are based on a nature run (NR) from a chemistry transport model (MOCAGE) and error estimates using instrument characteristics. We assimilate the simulated observations into a chemistry transport model (LOTOS-EUROS) independent of the NR to evaluate their impact on modelled NO2 tropospheric columns and surface concentrations. The results are compared to an operational system where only ground-based ozone observations are ingested. Both instruments have an added value to analysed NO2 columns and surface values, reflected in decreased biases and improved correlations. The Sentinel-4 NO2 observations with hourly temporal resolution benefit modelled NO2 analyses throughout the entire day where the daily Sentinel-5P NO2 observations have a slightly lower impact that lasts up to 3–6 h after overpass. The evaluated benefits may be even higher in reality as the applied error estimates were shown to be higher than actual errors in the now operational Sentinel-5P NO2 products. We show that an accurate representation of the NO2 profile is crucial for the benefit of the column observations on surface values. The results support the need for having a combination of GEO and LEO missions for NO2 analyses in view of the complementary benefits of hourly temporal resolution (GEO, Sentinel-4) and global coverage (LEO, Sentinel-5P).
2019
2019
Information on the origin of pollution constitutes an essential step of air quality management as it helps identifying measures to control air pollution. In this work, we review the most widely used source-apportionment methods for air quality management. Using theoretical and real-case datasets we study the differences among these methods and explain why they result in very different conclusions to support air quality planning. These differences are a consequence of the intrinsic assumptions that underpin the different methodologies and determine/limit their range of applicability. We show that ignoring their underlying assumptions is a risk for efficient/successful air quality management as these methods are sometimes used beyond their scope and range of applicability. The simplest approach based on increments (incremental approach) is often not suitable to support air quality planning. Contributions obtained through mass-transfer methods (receptor models or tagging approaches built in air quality models) are appropriate to support planning but only for specific pollutants. Impacts obtained via “brute-force” methods are the best suited but it is important to assess carefully their application range to make sure they reproduce correctly the prevailing chemical regimes.
2019
2019
NILU - Norsk institutt for luftforskning har på oppdrag for Boliden Odda AS, utført sprednings- og avsetningsberegninger i forbindelse med utslipp fra sinkproduksjonsanlegget. Studien beregner luftkonsentrasjon og avsetning av svovel (forsuring), og konsentrasjon av metaller/svevestøv ved dagens sinkproduksjon og ved en planlagt utvidelse. Timesmiddel-, døgnmiddel- og årsmiddel-konsentrasjon av SO2 og PM10 er beregnet til å være innenfor grenseverdier og luftkvalitetskriterier ved dagens og utvidet produksjon. Beregningene viser mulig overskridelse av målsetningsverdien for kadmium ved en utvidelse av produksjonen. Utvidelse i produksjon gir et ytterligere bidrag til overskridelsen av tålegrensen (forsuring) i området rundt Odda. Økningen i avsetning forøvrig er beregnet å være i områder hvor tålegrensen er mer robust.
NILU
2019
2019
2019