Urban population exposure to NO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;x&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; emissions from local shipping in three Baltic Sea harbour cities – a generic approach

Martin Otto Paul Ramacher,Lasse Johansson,Matthias Karl,Johannes Bieser,Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen

doi:10.5194/acp-19-9153-2019

Urban population exposure to NO&lt;sub&gt;&lt;i&gt;x&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; emissions from local shipping in three Baltic Sea harbour cities – a generic approach

Martin Otto Paul Ramacher, Lasse Johansson + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-9153-2019

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Abstract

Abstract. Ship emissions in ports can have a significant impact on local air quality (AQ), population exposure and therefore human health in harbour cities. We determined the impact of shipping emissions in harbours on local AQ and population exposure in the Baltic Sea harbour cities Rostock (Germany), Riga (Latvia) and the urban agglomeration of Gdańsk–Gdynia (Poland) for 2012. An urban AQ study was performed using a global-to-local chemistry transport model chain with the EPISODE-CityChem model for the urban scale. We simulated NO2, O3 and PM concentrations in 2012 with the aim of determining the impact of local shipping activities on population exposure in Baltic Sea harbour cities. Based on simulated concentrations, dynamic population exposure to outdoor NO2 concentrations for all urban domains was calculated. We developed and used a novel generic approach to model dynamic population activity in different microenvironments based on publicly available data. The results of the new approach are hourly microenvironment-specific population grids with a spatial resolution of 100 m × 100 m. We multiplied these grids with surface pollutant concentration fields of the same resolution to calculate total population exposure. We found that the local shipping impact on NO2 concentrations is significant, contributing 22 %, 11 % and 16 % to the total annually averaged grid mean concentration for Rostock, Riga and Gdańsk–Gdynia, respectively. For PM2.5, the contribution of shipping is substantially lower, at 1 %–3 %. When it comes to microenvironment-specific exposure to annual NO2, the highest exposure to NO2 from all emission sources was found in the home environment (54 %–59 %). Emissions from shipping have a high impact on NO2 exposure in the port area (50 %–80 %), while the influence in home, work and other environments is lower on average (3 %–14 %) but still has high impacts close to the port areas and downwind of them. Besides this, the newly developed generic approach allows for dynamic population-weighted outdoor exposure calculations in European cities without the necessity of individually measured data or large-scale surveys on population data.

Highlights

According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), more than 90 % of world trade is carried by sea, since maritime transport is the most cost-effective way to move mass goods and raw materials (International Maritime Organization, 2015)
The objective of this study is to identify the impact of emissions due to local shipping activities on air quality and population exposure to concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in three major Baltic Sea harbour cities: Rostock (Germany), Riga (Latvia) and the urban agglomeration of Gdansk–Gdynia (Poland)
We have presented population exposure to total and shippingrelated NO2 outdoor concentrations in different microenvironments of the Baltic Sea harbour cities Rostock and Riga and the urban agglomeration of Gdansk–Gdynia

Summary

Introduction

According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), more than 90 % of world trade is carried by sea, since maritime transport is the most cost-effective way to move mass goods and raw materials (International Maritime Organization, 2015). Maritime transport is an important source of air pollutants on the global (Wang et al, 2008) and European level (Eyring et al, 2010) and can contribute significantly to local air quality (AQ) problems in European harbour cities of all sizes (Viana et al, 2009). Ships are known to emit 5–7 × 109 kg yr−1 of nitrogen oxides (NOx), 4.7–6.5 × 109 kg yr−1 of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and 1.2–1.6 × 109 kg yr−1 of particulate matter (PM) into the atmosphere (Smith et al, 2014; Corbett and Koehler, 2003; Eyring et al, 2005); 70 % of these emissions occur near coastlines and contribute to air pollution in both coastal areas and harbour cities (Andersson et al, 2009; Corbett et al, 1999; Endresen, 2003). Ramacher et al.: Urban population exposure to NOx emissions from local shipping

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