Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
U.S. EPA, National Air Quality Status and Trends through 2007
, EPA-454/R-08-006, November
2008, available at http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends/2008/report/TrendsReportfull.pdf.
West, J.J. and A.M. Fiore (2005) Manag
ement of tropospheric ozone by reducing methane
emissions. Environ. Sci. & Technol. 39(13): 4685-4691
4. Questions and Answers
Katarzyna Juda-Rezler:
I would like to ask you for a comment about (future)
precipitation role on air quality. In our simulation with coupled RCM-CTM for
Poland, we obtained increased precipitation and decreased PM concentration.
Could you comment on that?
Answer:
We have not yet analyzed the PM or precipitation response in our study
in any detail and we are not sure that the modest summertime increase in
PM just shown is statistically significant. We would not have been surprised to
find just what you found. However, we do seem to have a slight increase in
summertime PM2.5 and a decrease in precipitation [not shown] over central
Europe, though neither looks like it will be statistically significant. We are just
beginning to examine the climate behavior of our new chemistry-climate model.
K. Fedra:
Does that not suggest we should look into adaptation, robustness,
resilience rather than (NBR) impossible prediction?
Answer:
The speaker's answer, speaking as a private citizen, is that his bet is on
adaptation because of the political and technical complexity of identifying the
long-term climate change signal, particularly the regional signal in the presence
of short-term natural climate variability. The speaker would also note that, in
his opinion, by far the biggest uncertainties are in our ability to project future
emissions, rather than our ability to model the chemical-climate system.
