Abstract
EMeRGe (Effect of Megacities on the transport and transformation of pollutants on the Regional to Global scales) is an international project focusing on atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and transport of local and regional pollution originating in megacities and other major population centres (MPCs). Airborne measurements, taking advantage of the long range capabilities of the HALO research platform (High Altitude and Long range research aircraft, www.halo-spp.de), are a central part of the research project. In order to provide an adequate set of measurements at different spatial scales, two field experiments were positioned in time and space to contrast situations when the photochemical transformation of plumes emerging from MPCs is large. These experiments were conducted in summer 2017 over Europe and in the inter-monsoon period over Asia in spring 2018. The intensive observational periods (IOP) involved HALO airborne measurements of ozone and its precursors, volatile organic compounds, aerosol particles and related species as well as coordinated ground-based ancillary observations at different sites. Perfluorocarbon (PFC) tracer releases and model forecasts supported the flight planning and the identification of pollution plumes. This paper describes the experimental deployment of the IOP in Europe, which comprised 7 HALO research flights with aircraft base in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany) for a total of 53 flight hours. The MPC targets London (Great Britain), Benelux/Ruhr area (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany), Paris (France), Rome and Po Valley (Italy), Madrid and Barcelona (Spain) were investigated. An in-flight comparison of HALO with the collaborating UK-airborne platform FAAM took place to assure accuracy and comparability of the instrumentation on-board. Generally, significant enhancement of trace gases and aerosol particles are attributed to emissions originating in MPCs at distances of hundreds of kilometres from the sources. The proximity of different MPCs over Europe favours the mixing of plumes of different origin and level of processing and hampers the unambiguous attribution of the MPC sources. Similarly, urban plumes mix efficiently with natural sources as desert dust and with biomass burning emissions from vegetation and forest fires. This confirms the importance of wildland fire emissions in Europe and indicates an important but discontinuous contribution to the European emission budget that might be of relevance in the design of efficient mitigation strategies. The synergistic use and consistent interpretation of observational data sets of different spatial and temporal resolution (e.g. from ground-based networks, airborne campaigns, and satellite measurements) supported by modelling within EMeRGe, provides a unique insight to test the current understanding of MPC pollution outflows. The present work provides an overview of the most salient results and scientific questions in the European context, these being addressed in more detail within additional dedicated EMeRGe studies. The deployment and results obtained in Asia will be the subject of separate publications.
Highlights
In recent decades, the number and size of major population centres (MPCs) have increased dramatically
This paper describes the experimental deployment of the intensive observational periods (IOP) in Europe, which comprised 7 HALO research flights with aircraft base in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany) for a total of 53 flight hours
For the Rome MPC, the airborne measurements at low altitudes made by the Sky Arrow research aircraft agree reasonably well with the columnar amounts of gases observed by the PANDONIA global network for air quality and atmospheric composition and the remote sensing observations on-board HALO
Summary
The number and size of major population centres (MPCs) have increased dramatically. Chemical and physical processing of MPC emitted pollutants can in turn be affected by mixing with natural, biogenic and other anthropogenic emissions from regional sources or long-range transported from other areas (Lawrence et al., 2007, Monks et al, 2009, Lawrence and Lelieveld, 2010, and references therein). The predicted changes in these patterns indicate that future air quality in MPCs will generally be less influenced by local emission sources than by the mixing of anthropogenic and natural emissions outside the MPC (Butler et al, 2012). Controlling policies, changes in land cover and climate might substantially modify the relation between anthropogenic emissions and both natural aerosol and trace gases, as predicted by e.g., Butler et al, (2012), and recently reported for East Asia (Fu et al, 2016; Silver et al, 2018 and references ; Leung et al, 2018). The current knowledge on all these aspects is still insufficient
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