Source attribution of nitrogen oxides across Germany: Comparing the labelling approach and brute force technique with LOTOS-EUROS

Millions of people are exposed to enhanced levels of nitrogen dioxide in urbanized areas, leading to severe health effects. Moreover, nitrogen oxides contribute to the formation of ozone and particulate matter, and as such have wider health related impacts. A substantial reduction of nitrogen oxides may offer considerable health benefits for the...

Evaluation of modelled LOTOS-EUROS with observational based PM10 source attribution

Due to its serious health impact particulate matter is one of the air pollutants subject to abatement policies. Information on the main sources responsible for high concentrations of pollutants is therefore crucial to enable effective policy measures. In this study we compared two different methods for attribution of particulate matter...

Recommendations and Generic Data Assimilation Tools for the Improvement of CAMS Regional Air Quality Service

Within Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) an ensemble of 9 chemistry transport models provides daily analyses and forecasts, as well as annual reanalyses over Europe. The CAMS_61 project was developed to provide development plans, guidelines and tools for the upgrade of the models within this regional air quality service. In this...

The urbem hybrid method to derive high-resolution emissions for city-scale air quality modeling

As cities are growing in size and complexity, the estimation of air pollution exposure requires a detailed spatial representation of air pollution levels, rather than homogenous fields, provided by global- or regional-scale models. A critical input for city-scale modeling is a timely and spatially resolved emission inventory. Bottom–up...

Source apportionment of PM2.5 across China using LOTOS-EUROS

China's population is exposed to high levels of particulate matter (PM) due to its strong economic growth and associated urbanization and industrialization. To support policy makers to develop cost effective mitigation strategies it is of crucial importance to understand the emission sources as well as formation routes responsible for high...

Synergistic use of OMI NO2 tropospheric columns and LOTOS-EUROS to evaluate the NOx emission trends across Europe

In this study trends in the tropospheric NO2 concentrations during 2005-2010 across Europe were derived from the synergistic use of OMI NO2 tropospheric columns and the chemistry transport model LOTOS-EUROS and were compared to reported NOx emissions. The chemistry transport model captures a large fraction of the variability in NO2 columns at a...

Differences in particulate matter concentrations between urban and rural regions under current and changing climate conditions

Pollution levels in urban areas and their surrounding rural regions differ due to different sources and density of emissions, different composition of pollutants as well as specific meteorological effects. These concentration differences for PM10 are investigated and compared in this study for three different north-west European urban...

The origin of ambient particulate matter concentrations in the Netherlands

Particulate matter poses a significant threat to human health. To be able to develop effective mitigation strategies, the origin of particulate matter needs to be established. The regional air quality model LOTOS-EUROS, equipped with a newly developed labeling routine, was used to establish the origin of PM10 and PM2.5 in the Netherlands for...

Assessing the sensitivity of the OMI-NO2 product to emission changes across europe

The advent of satellite data has provided a source of independent information to monitor trends in tropospheric nitrogen dioxide levels. To interpret these trends, one needs to know the sensitivity of the satellite retrieved NO2 column to anthropogenic emissions. We have applied a chemistry transport model to investigate the sensitivity of the...

Vertical emission profiles for Europe based on plume rise calculations

The vertical allocation of emissions has a major impact on results of Chemistry Transport Models. However, in Europe it is still common to use fixed vertical profiles based on rough estimates to determine the emission height of point sources. This publication introduces a set of new vertical profiles for the use in chemistry transport modeling...

The added value of a proposed satellite imager for ground level particulate matter analyses and forecasts

Monitoring aerosols over wide areas is important for the assessment of the population's exposure to health relevant particulate matter (PM). Satellite observations of aerosol optical depth (AOD) can contribute to the improvement of highly needed analyzed and forecasted distributions of PM when combined with a model and ground-based observations....