Using Geocomputation and R as a Methodological Tool: Re-Creating Spatial Structures of the Irish Republican Army in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland

This study provides a cross-national exploration of the media and public responses to the 2002 Irish Republican Army (IRA) statement of apology for the hundreds of non-combatant deaths caused by them over the past 30 years. The study explored responses to the statement in national, regional, and local news papers across the United States, England, and Northern Ireland. It was hypothesized that relational closeness to victims of the IRA campaign would affect attitudes toward the IRA apology, as would geographical closeness to the political violence in Northern Ireland; also within Northern Ireland there would be differences in attitudes toward the statement due to the ethnopolitical orientation of the newspapers' intended readership. The results broadly supported these hypotheses, with the U.S. print media being generally more positive and the English print media more negative in attitude toward the statement of apology. Also, among responses in England, those areas that had suffered directly from IRA violence tended to have the most negative reactions of all. In Northern Ireland, newspapers with a predominately Catholic readership responded to the IRA apology generally positively, whereas newspapers with a predominately Protestant readership responded generally negatively. The results illustrate difficulties facing peace processes in settings of ethnic violence and the complexity of responses to apology and forgiveness of relevant publics within and outside actual conflict areas.

THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMYʼS «GREEN BOOK»: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC GOALS OF THE ORGANIZATION

Between 1969 and 1997, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought against British rule in Northern Ireland. Some scholars suggest Republicans saw the IRA as vital to achieving Irish unification. They argue that the IRA only ended their campaign because the organisation faced a trajectory of decline by the 1990s. Others agree that the IRA was utilised by Republicans to achieve unity but conclude that the IRA faced a stalemate by the 1990s and accepted a political compromise. Using a range of sources, I argue Irish Republican leaders viewed the IRA always as a tactic to get its opponents to negotiate and provide concessions towards its objectives, most crucially securing the principle of all-Ireland self-determination in some form. The IRA’s role in Republican strategy fluctuated in importance. Between 1969 and 1975, it was the main method used to try to get Republicans into talks and to try to achieve self-determination. After 1975, Republican leaders still believed the IRA was required to pressurise the British Government back into negotiations. But a political mandate was added to ensure their opponents would agree to and implement a political settlement inclusive of the principle of self-determination once IRA violence ceased. This “Armalite and Ballot Box” strategy lasted until 1997. I also demonstrate how recent archival releases show the IRA’s weapons remained in the background until 2005 in case the British Government and Unionists delayed implementing reforms agreed in the peace deal. During the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire, they discussed “TUAS”. Some commentators believe it meant the “Tactical Use of Armed Struggle”. This phrase best explains the IRA’s role in Republican strategy from 1969 to 2005. This case study reveals a pragmatism behind the leadership of some non-state armed groups.

"Uncharitable Tongues": Womenand Abusive Language in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland Cara Delay In 1914 the Catholic priest of Rosmuck, County Galway, reported on the status of his parish to Bishop Thomas O'Dea. He described a general state of peace, with one notable exception: "[wjomen," he explained, "sometimes say uncharitable things."1 One year later, another Galway priest informed his bishop that, although the parish could boast of having few problems or abuses, "some women of the parish have uncharitable tongues."2 Like the Galway priests, Irish legal authorities of the time also commented on the strange and troubling phenomenon of sharp-tongued women. In August 1911, one magis trate expressed his frustration when yet another case of abusive lan guage appeared in his court: "It is a strange thing that we never have a man here charged with that offence," he said. "It is all women ... I am sorry to say... that are charged."3 Indeed, just as Ireland's priests and bishops mulled over the problem, the secular courts busily pros ecuted thousands of women for abusive and threatening language. Priests' and magistrates' concerns testify that authorities, both colonial and Catholic, viewed verbally abusive women as a problem in early twentieth-century Ireland. On the one hand, such fears did reflect realities: many Irish women used their words to police each other, navigate community conflicts, and assert themselves within families and kin groups. As they scolded and defamed, such women, who were mostly poor or working class, followed well-established FeministStudies39, no. 3. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 628 Cara Delay 629 local traditions. On the other hand, anxieties about women with "uncharitable tongues" took on greater meaning from 1900-1915, a key time in Ireland's nation-building process. By the dawn of the new century, the nation was closely tied to the ideal of silent, peace ful, and benignly influential Catholic womanhood. Rural, Catholic, Gaelic Ireland—increasingly defined as the "real" Ireland—relied on a depiction of women as private and domestic.4 The wife and mother emerged as the nurturer of the family, poised to civilize men and children, in this Catholic and nationalist creation. As women's stud ies scholar Ursula Barry reminds us, women were constructed at the heart of Ireland, as "the standard bearers, the holders of the cul ture, the representatives" of the nation's soul.5 By the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Catholic discourse, which was deeply implicated in nation-building, fashioned Irish women as not only essentially private but also, in the words of Jesuit W. J. Lockington, "low-voiced."6 Women's "uncharitable tongues" presented a vocal, vis ible challenge to the ideal of modern Irish womanhood and thus to the emerging Catholic nation. In this article, I examine the ways in which poor Irish women in the early twentieth century used their voices to denounce and abuse their neighbors and kin. I assess the ensuing public distur bances and the responses that such disturbances provoked. After situating women's words and language, including gossip and scold ing, in a larger historical context, I focus on southern and western Irish women who were summoned to court for the criminal charge of abusive and threatening language during these years. My analy sis here draws on the records of the petty sessions courts, the lowest level of courts in Britain and Ireland, which dealt mostly with minor offenses. The charge of "abusive or threatening language," which was almost always leveled against women, reminds us of the ways in which women, by denouncing and cursing their neighbors, used their words to deliberate effect. My emphasis on Ireland's southern and western counties, and particularly Galway and Kerry, allows us to assess how poor women far away from significant urban centers interacted with each other and their communities. It also allows us to examine the disconnects between gender ideals and the realities of women's lives in the part of Ireland—the rural heartland—that con temporary commentators constructed as the "real" Ireland.7 630 Cara Delay I argue here that, although poor women were in fact using their words to regulate each other's behavior, newspapers and courts paid...

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has been the most aggressively hostile opponent of the border that was established in Ireland during the 1920s. This article focuses on the fact that the IRA’s own violence emerged from a substantial, evolving and complex politics. It suggests that close consideration of that politics, of associated IRA violence and of the long-term implications of both, represents a necessary part of understanding the Irish border and its associated and important histories. Three case studies are considered: Ernie O’Malley (1897–1957); Peadar O’Donnell (1893–1986); the Provisional IRA (1969–2005). The article argues that the paradoxical outcomes of these three significant IRA case studies point towards the need for greater honesty about the actual effects of non-state political violence; it also argues for an empathetic approach to understanding those with whom one instinctively disagrees, if the political history of the Irish border and its legacies is to be properly understood.

Abstract. Megacities and other major population centres (MPCs) worldwide are major sources of air pollution, both locally as well as downwind. The overall assessment and prediction of the impact of MPC pollution on tropospheric chemistry are challenging. The present work provides an overview of the highlights of a major new contribution to the understanding of this issue based on the data and analysis of the EMeRGe (Effect of Megacities on the transport and transformation of pollutants on the Regional to Global scales) international project. EMeRGe focuses on atmospheric chemistry, dynamics, and transport of local and regional pollution originating in MPCs. Airborne measurements, taking advantage of the long range capabilities of the High Altitude and LOng Range Research Aircraft (HALO, https://www.halo-spp.de, last access: 22 March 2022), are a central part of the project. 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 provide unique insight to test the current understanding of MPC pollution outflows. In order to obtain 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 (IOPs) 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, the identification of pollution plumes, and the analysis of chemical transformations during transport. This paper describes the experimental deployment and scientific questions of the IOP in Europe. The MPC targets – London (United Kingdom; UK), the Benelux/Ruhr area (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany), Paris (France), Rome and the Po Valley (Italy), and Madrid and Barcelona (Spain) – were investigated during seven HALO research flights with an aircraft base in Germany for a total of 53 flight hours. An in-flight comparison of HALO with the collaborating UK-airborne platform Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) took place to assure accuracy and comparability of the instrumentation on board. Overall, EMeRGe unites measurements of near- and far-field emissions and hence deals with complex air masses of local and distant sources. Regional transport of several European MPC outflows was successfully identified and measured. Chemical processing of the MPC emissions was inferred from airborne observations of primary and secondary pollutants and the ratios between species having different chemical lifetimes. Photochemical processing of aerosol and secondary formation or organic acids was evident during the transport of MPC plumes. Urban plumes mix efficiently with natural sources as mineral 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 present work provides an overview of the most salient results in the European context, with 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.

The burning of the city of Cork on the night of 11-12 December 1920 —a “truly staggering reprisal” — was one of many outrageous acts by British forces in Ireland in the late autumn of 1920 and indeed during the entire Anglo-Irish War. Known in Ireland at the time as “the troubles” and in Éire today as “the war of independence,” or “the war of liberation,” the Anglo-Irish War lasted two-and-one-half years from January, 1919, until the truce in July, 1921. Not only did that struggle mark the end of 750 years of Irish subjection under Britain; it served as a warning of the eventual collapse of British and Western imperialism throughout the world.Throughout the first eight months of 1919 the British government's policy was simply military suppression of the Republican Movement. Repeatedly, it misjudged Sinn Féin and the rising Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) as nothing but a “murder gang” terrorizing the mass of the Irish people. Not until the Fall of 1919 did Lloyd George finally conceive a policy — one combining force with appeasement. The latter was offered to Ireland in the Fourth Home Rule Bill though it was to be rejected by a majority of the Irish press and people. From the fall of 1919 until the summer of 1920, Lloyd George stepped up coercion, not only by strengthening the military, but by introducing “Black and Tans” into the Irish police force and establishing a new administration at Dublin Castle in the spring of 1920.When, in late July, 1920, it became evident to the British cabinet that police action was losing to the I.R.A.'s guerilla tactics, they broadened the struggle even further by choosing, not appeasement along Dominion lines, but a policy of war. Though never officially declared, war was first implemented under the guise of restoring order in Ireland and later by martial law. Accompanying Lloyd George's war policy between the summers of 1920 and 1921 were systematic reprisals against Irish civilians and their property by British forces retaliating for the I.R.A.'s killing of their own men. These reprisals, which became official and regulated under martial law in 1921, were unauthorized — although not officially condemned — in 1919 and 1920. Unauthorized reprisals reached a peak in the fall of 1920 at Balbriggan, Groke Park, and in the burning of Cork.

“Dissident” Irish Republican is a generic term used to describe activists who disagree with the political and military direction taken by the two lead organizations of the Irish Republican Movement, that is “Provisional” Sinn Féin and the “Provisional” IRA – the Provisionals. “Dissidents” reject the term and argue that it is the Provisionals who have dissented from traditional republicanism. During the Irish War of Independence era (1916–1923), Irish Republican Army (IRA) rebels complemented by Sinn Féin politicians and members of Cumann na mBan, a women's organization, established an all‐Ireland revolutionary parliament, Dáil Éireann. The British did not recognize this parliament and it was disestablished in 1922 when Dáil Éireann representatives ratified by a slim margin the Anglo‐Irish Treaty. The treaty confirmed the partition of Ireland and the creation of separate parliaments in Belfast for Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom, and Dublin for the quasi‐independent Irish Free State (later, the Republic of Ireland). A minority of activists remained committed to the all‐Ireland Dáil Éireann, rejected the Dublin and Belfast parliaments, and held fast to the claim that Irish people have the right to include armed struggle in their collective action repertoire as they pursue a reunited Irish Republic. And these activists maintained the IRA, Sinn Féin, and Cumann na mBan. A key reason the “Provisionals” split from the leadership of the republican movement in 1969/1970 was that the “Officials” endorsed taking seats in the Belfast, Dublin, and London parliaments.

To examine the influence of geographical and seasonal factors on duration of solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure of skin to produce recommended vitamin D levels without producing erythema. An ecological study using daily Ultraviolet Index (UVI) data collected in major population centres across Australia for 1 year (1 January - 31 December 2001) to calculate sun exposure times for recommended vitamin D production and erythema. Sun exposure times to produce either serum vitamin D concentrations equivalent to an oral intake of 200-600 IU/day or erythema for people aged 19-50 years with fair skin (Fitzpatrick type II skin) exposing 15% of the body. In January, across Australia, 2-14 minutes of sun three to four times per week at 12:00 is sufficient to ensure recommended vitamin D production in fair-skinned people with 15% of the body exposed. However, erythema can occur in as little as 8 minutes. By contrast, at 10:00 and 15:00, there is a greater difference between exposure time to produce erythema and that to produce recommended vitamin D levels, thereby reducing the risk of sunburn from overexposure. From October to March, around 10-15 minutes of sun exposure at around 10:00 or 15:00 three to four times per week should be enough for fair-skinned people across Australia to produce recommended vitamin D levels. Longer exposure times are needed from April to September, particularly in southern regions of Australia. Our study reinforces the importance of existing sun protection messages for the summer months throughout Australia. However, fair-skinned people should be able to obtain sufficient vitamin D from short periods of unprotected sun exposure of the face, arms and hands outside of the peak UV period (10:00-15:00) throughout Australia for most of the year. The greater variability in sun exposure times during winter, means that optimal sun exposure advice should be tailored to each location.

The signing of the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was a traumatic experience for many Irish people. This is not only because of the ensuing Irish Civil War, but the psychological adjustments that the Irish people have to make in their partitioned land. Since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerged during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21), it has been bent on terminating the British government’s control of Ireland and establishing a truly independent and unified Irish Republic through armed struggles. This traumatic history, which was embedded with the conflicts and compromises of such struggles, became a pivotal issue in many Irish writings. As a consequence, it helped shape subsequent Irish literature and culture when the dream of a free and unified Ireland was constantly recalled and reconfigured. These painful markings are reflected in complex ways in Edna O’Brien’s fiction House of Splendid Isolation (1994), in which an IRA fugitive named McGreevy holes up and finally bonds with Josie O’Meara, an aged widow, in a dilapidated house. Apart from the political turmoil, considerable anguishes caused by love and marriage converge to entangle the protagonists’ traumas. This paper focuses on how, by shifting between the multifarious narrative perspectives, O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation stitches the interwoven personal, interpersonal, and national suffering together. In addition, the role women play in facilitating sympathetic understanding and reconciliation amid the violence and traumas in contemporary Ireland is discussed. The findings imply that, despite the age-old traumatic experiences caused by political conflicts in Ireland in the past few centuries, a trauma-free tomorrow via love and reconciliation, mostly with the help of women, is possible in contemporary Ireland.

This dissertation uses the idea of a moral polity as an organizing concept to help understand how the Irish Republican Army and Black Panther Party understood their own actions and the imprisonment of large numbers of their members. In referring to the “moral polity” this study describes socio-political structures and relations created by people who are animated by a series of collectively held ideas about how authorities and populations should interact. The collectively held ideas that provide the foundation for a moral polity emphasize reciprocities between authorities and a population living under those authorities, fairness and justice between these two parties, and trust between the authorities and that population. Moral Polities promote human dignity and the welfare of the community, and the beliefs that undergird them are formed in opposition to established socio-political structures. The first chapters reveal the moral polities created by the BPP and IRA, looking first at precursors of these moral polities and then focusing on the opposition their creators faced from the governments and security forces of the United States, Northern Ireland, and Britain. As the Panthers and IRA espoused a radical reordering of society based on their collectively held beliefs, they threatened power structures who resorted to counterintelligence and internment without trial in their attempts to quell the threats they saw coming from the BPP an IRA, which in turn resulted in in large numbers of prisoners. The last chapters examine the decline of the Black Panther Party and the rise of the Irish republican prisoner. The BPP was unable to overcome the divisions within their party which the FBI exploited in the years before 1973. This left them unable to uphold the moral polity they had created around chapters across the nation. Although some members of the Party struggled to keep the Party and its envisioned society afloat, the BPP did not last beyond 1982. Conversely, when British authorities revoked special category status in Northern Irish prisons, and therefore, destroyed the IRA’s reordering of prison society, the IRA embarked on five years of sustained protest which resulted in a recreation of their moral polity.

Abstract. Major population centers (MPCs), or megacities, represent the largest of growing urban agglomerations with major societal and environmental implications. In terms of air quality, they are seen as localized but strong emission sources of aerosols and trace gases which in turn affect air pollution levels in the city or in downwind regions. In the state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry general circulation model EMAC, generic aerosol and gas-phase tracers with equal emission source strengths at 46 MPC locations are used to study the balance between local pollution build-up and pollution export, either vertically into the upper troposphere or horizontally in the lower troposphere. The insoluble gas-phase tracers with fixed lifetimes are transported with the atmospheric circulation, while the aerosol tracers also undergo gravitational sedimentation as well as dry and wet deposition processes. The strength of low-level tracer export depends on the location of the emission source and prevailing meteorology, in particular on atmospheric stability and the height of the boundary layer and the mixing out of this layer. In contrast, vertical transport of tracer mass depends on the tracer's solubility: the more soluble a tracer is, the less mass reaches altitudes above five kilometers. Hence, the mass of insoluble gas-phase tracer above five kilometers can be up to ten times higher than the hydrophilic aerosol mass from the same source. In the case of aerosol tracers, pollution build-up around the source is determined by meteorological factors which have only indirect effects on tracer lifetime, like surface wind, boundary layer height, and turbulent mixing, as well as those which affect the lifetime of the tracers such as precipitation. The longer a tracer stays in the atmosphere, the lower is the relative importance of the location of the source to the atmospheric mass, and thus the lower is the relative local pollution build-up. We further use aerosol deposition fields to estimate regions with high deposition, that is more than 1% or more than 5% of the corresponding tracer emission deposited in this region. In doing so, we find that the high deposition areas are larger for aerosols with diameters of 10.0 μm, and these differ less between the MPCs than for aerosols with diameters smaller than 2.5 μm due to faster deposition. Furthermore, cities in regions with high precipitation rates or unfavorable geographic locations, e.g., in a basin, suffer most of this high deposition. Most of the high deposition occurs over land, although about 50% of the MPCs are located along coastlines. By folding the aerosol deposition fields with geographical distributions of cropland, pasture, and forest, the impact on different land ecosystems is assessed. In general, forest is exposed most to deposition from MPCs while pastureland is least affected. Moreover, the impact on humans, measured with a threshold exceedance of pollutant surface mixing ratios, is more dependent on population densities than on the size of the area with a certain mixing ratio.

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.

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.

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.