Special issue of the 5th international conference on Urban Air Quality 29–31 March 2005, Valencia, Spain

Abstract

The interest in urban air pollution has continued to grow in the research community and in the wider public domain. The particular focus on the environmental and health impacts of air pollution in cities has stimulated research on urban meteorology that underpins our understanding of the dispersion and mixing processes. Urban features, such as buildings and road surfaces, exhibit heterogeneity that itself can vary considerably from one city to another. How such features influence the movement and behaviour of emissions, for example from road vehicles, has become a topic of increased research activity. In addition, recent advances in computational methods and approaches allow the detailed structure of the urban environment to be incorporated in advanced air quality models to improve the treatment of the urban boundary layer. Since the start of this series of conferences in 1996, urban meteorological research has experienced considerable growth in the number of papers presented at the meetings. This has resulted from the involvement of key international groups and networks including the Cluster of European Air Quality Research (CLEAR), FP6 Network of Excellence ACCENT: Atmospheric Composition Change, FP5 project FUMAPEX: Integrated Systems for Forecasting Urban Meteorology, Air Pollution and Population Exposure, FP5 project