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The regional impact of urban emissions on air quality in Europe: the role of the urban canopy effects

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TLDR
In this paper, the authors investigated how the urban emission impact (UEI) is modulated by the urban canopy meteorological forcing (UCMF) for present-day climate conditions (2015-2016) for selected central European cities (Berlin, Budapest, Munich, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw).
Abstract
. Urban areas are hot spots of intense emissions, and they influence air quality not only locally but on a regional or even global scale. The impact of urban emissions over different scales depends on the dilution and chemical transformation of the urban plumes which are governed by the local- and regional-scale meteorological conditions. These are influenced by the presence of urbanized land surface via the so-called urban canopy meteorological forcing (UCMF). In this study, we investigate for selected central European cities (Berlin, Budapest, Munich, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw) how the urban emission impact (UEI) is modulated by the UCMF for present-day climate conditions (2015–2016) using two regional climate models, the regional climate models RegCM and Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem; its meteorological part), and two chemistry transport models, Comprehensive Air Quality Model with Extensions (CAMx) coupled to either RegCM and WRF and the “chemical” component of WRF-Chem. The UCMF was calculated by replacing the urbanized surface by a rural one, while the UEI was estimated by removing all anthropogenic emissions from the selected cities. We analyzed the urban-emission-induced changes in near-surface concentrations of NO2 , O3 and PM 2.5 . We found increases in NO2 and PM 2.5 concentrations over cities by 4–6 ppbv and 4–6  µg m−3 , respectively, meaning that about 40 %–60 % and 20 %–40 % of urban concentrations of NO2 and PM 2.5 are caused by local emissions, and the rest is the result of emissions from the surrounding rural areas. We showed that if UCMF is included, the UEI of these pollutants is about 40 %–60 % smaller, or in other words, the urban emission impact is overestimated if urban canopy effects are not taken into account. In case of ozone, models due to UEI usually predict decreases of around −2 to −4  ppbv (about 10 %–20 %), which is again smaller if UCMF is considered (by about 60 %). We further showed that the impact on extreme (95th percentile) air pollution is much stronger, and the modulation of UEI is also larger for such situations. Finally, we evaluated the contribution of the urbanization-induced modifications of vertical eddy diffusion to the modulation of UEI and found that it alone is able to explain the modeled decrease in the urban emission impact if the effects of UCMF are considered. In summary, our results showed that the meteorological changes resulting from urbanization have to be included in regional model studies if they intend to quantify the regional footprint of urban emissions. Ignoring these meteorological changes can lead to the strong overestimation of UEI.

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Citations
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Modeling the regional impact of ship emissions on NO x and ozone levels over the Eastern Atlantic and Western Europe using ship plume parameterization

TL;DR: In this article, an approach to deal with the non-linear effects during dispersion of NOx emissions from ships is presented, which uses an exhaust tracer to trace the amount of the emitted species in the plume and applies an effective reaction rate for the ozone production/destruction during the dilution into the background air.
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Health effects of outdoor air pollution

TL;DR: The general view is that particulate matter causes the adverse health effect of air pollution, even though epidemiological studies alone have obvious limitations when it comes to conclusions about causation.
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Impacts of East Mediterranean megacity emissions on air quality

TL;DR: In this article, the impacts of anthropogenic emissions from the Greater Istanbul Area and the Greater Athens Area (GAA) on the air quality in GIA, GAA and the entire East Mediterranean are quantified for typical wintertime (December 2008) and summertime (July 2008) conditions.
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The impact of anthropogenic and biogenic emissions on surface ozone concentrations in Istanbul.

TL;DR: Surface ozone concentrations at Istanbul during a summer episode in June 2008 were simulated using a high resolution and urban scale modeling system coupling MM5 and CMAQ models with a recently developed anthropogenic emission inventory for the region to investigate the impact of biogenic emissions on ozone concentrations.
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Impact of Shanghai urban land surface forcing on downstream city ozone chemistry

TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of Shanghai urban land surface forcing on weather conditions and air quality over Kunshan was investigated using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with a multilayer urban canopy model and the Community Multiscale Air Quality model.
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What are the effects of urban area on air quality?

Urban areas impact air quality regionally due to emissions, with urban canopy effects modulating pollutants like NO2, O3, and PM2.5, showing overestimation of urban emission impact without considering UCMF.