How changing climate may influence air pollution control strategies for 2030?

Abstract

Air pollution is a global threat leading to large impacts on human health and ecosystems. In Europe, air quality remains poor in many areas, despite reductions in emissions and ambient concentrations. Air pollution and climate change are the biggest environmental concerns for Europeans, implying concerted and integrated actions to tackle them. The revised 2016 European National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD) enforces Member States to implement strategies, based on emission reduction measures, aimed to comply with targets by 2030 and achieve European Union (EU) and World Health Organization air quality objectives for environment and health protection. Despite those strategies are designed for 2030, the influence of climate change on air quality is not accounted for. In this sense, the purpose of this paper is the evaluation of the climate change impact on future air quality, taking into consideration emission reduction measures. The WRF-CAMx air quality modelling system was applied over Europe for one year selected as representative of a short-term changing climate (around 2030), and compared to a base case year, to estimate to what extent the climate variables by themselves could positively or negatively influence air quality. Results indicate that meteorological conditions may be decisive for the air quality state in the future. Differences between future and present simulations pointed to a global decrease of ozone levels in the future; increases and decreases in particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide concentrations over different seasons and European regions.This work is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the influence of climate variables on air quality improvement strategies as an additional support to European environmental authorities in developing the National Air Pollution Control Programmes in the scope of NECD.