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| Titel |
Effects of climate change on aerosol concentrations in Europe |
| VerfasserIn |
Athanasios G. Megaritis, Christos Fountoukis, Spyros N. Pandis |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250073642
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Abstract
High concentrations of particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in size (PM2.5), ozone and
other major constituents of air pollution, have adverse effects on human health, visibility and
ecosystems (Seinfeld and Pandis, 2006), and are strongly influenced by meteorology.
Emissions control policy is currently made assuming that climate will remain constant in the
future. However, climate change over the next decades is expected to be significant (IPCC,
2007) and may impact local and regional air quality. Determining the sensitivity of the
concentrations of air pollutants to climate change is an important step toward estimating
future air quality.
In this study we applied PMCAMx (Fountoukis et al., 2011), a three dimensional
chemical transport model, over Europe, in order to quantify the individual effects of various
meteorological parameters on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations. A
suite of perturbations in various meteorological factors, such as temperature, wind
speed, absolute humidity and precipitation were imposed separately on base case
conditions to determine the sensitivities of PM2.5 concentrations and composition to
these parameters. Different simulation periods (summer, autumn 2008 and winter
2009) are used to examine also the seasonal dependence of the air quality – climate
interactions.
The results of these sensitivity simulations suggest that there is an important link between
changes in meteorology and PM2.5 levels. We quantify through separate sensitivity
simulations the processes which are mainly responsible for the final predicted changes in
PM2.5 concentration and composition. The predicted PM2.5 response to those meteorology
perturbations was found to be quite variable in space and time. These results suggest that, the
changes in concentrations caused by changes in climate should be taken into account in
long-term air quality planning.
References
Fountoukis C., Racherla P. N., Denier van der Gon H. A. C., Polymeneas P.,
Charalampidis P. E., Pilinis C., Wiedensohler A., Dall’Osto M., O’Dowd C., and S. N.
Pandis: Evaluation of a three-dimensional chemical transport model (PMCAMx) in the
European domain during the EUCAARI May 2008 campaign, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11,
10331-10347, 2011.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report:
Summary for Policymakers, 2007.
Seinfeld, J. H., and Pandis, S. N.: Atmospheric chemistry and physics: From air
pollution to climate change, 2nd ed.; John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2006. |
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