Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4. Air Quality and Climate Change
The 2007 IPCC confirmation of the anthropogenic nature of climate change has
brought up key questions about the interaction between air quality and climate
change. Several recent studies attempt to quantify the impact of climate change on
regional air quality (see, e.g. Forkel and Knoche, 2006). Among the expected
consequences of climate change, heat waves have been the focus for air quality
and its impact on health, especially in the wake of the August 2003 heat wave
(Vautard et al., 2005). Using Summer 2003 as a prototype for air quality in future
summers is not obvious (Vautard et al., 2007) as the evolution of regional and
global emissions are expected to have a large effect, at least in the next 2 decades
(Szopa et al., 2006).
The significant contribution of air quality in regional climate change through
the direct and indirect effects of aerosols also has been identified, for instance
from statistical links between radiation, aerosol optical depth or visibility and
temperature changes (Norris and Wild, 2008; Philipona et al., 2009; Vautard et al.,
2009). However most regional air quality models do not yet include the key
feedback processes on climate through direct and indirect aerosol effects. More-
over the current skill of simulation of aerosol concentrations is poor, at least for
Europe (Stern et al., 2008). In order to quantify this effect an effort should be
made to improve aerosol models and develop coupled approaches.
5. Future Directions
It is clear that the development of comprehensive models has brought a lot to our
understanding of air quality. But a lot more is still ahead. Improved simulation of
aerosols at regional scales is needed, together with their radiative and micro-
physical feedback processes. More progresses are expected from inverse modelling
in order to improve emission inventories and their changes over years or decades.
For that purpose the use of satellite data should be essential. Air quality models
should also be used in conjunction with regional climate models in order to
simulate impacts on human and ecosystems exposure, and to evaluate possible
emission control scenarios that would preserve both climate and air quality.
References
Beekmann M., C. Derognat, Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis of a regional-scale transport
chemistry model constrained by measurements from the Atmospheric Pollution Over the Paris
Area (ESQUIF) campaign, J. Geophys. Res., 108 (D17), 8559, doi:10.1029/2003JD003391,
2003.
