scholarly journals Sectorial and regional uncertainty analysis of the contribution of anthropogenic emissions to regional and global PM<sub>2.5</sub> health impacts

Author(s):  
Monica Crippa ◽  
Greet Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
Diego Guizzardi ◽  
Rita Van Dingenen ◽  
Frank Dentener

Abstract. In this work we couple the HTAPv2.2 global air pollutant emission inventory with the global source receptor model TM5-FASST to evaluate the relative contribution of the major anthropogenic emission sources (power generation, industry, ground transport, residential, agriculture and international shipping) to air quality and human health in 2010. We focus on particulate matter (PM) concentrations because of the relative importance of PM2.5 emissions in populated areas and the proven cumulative negative effects on human health. We estimate that in 2010 regional annual averaged anthropogenic PM2.5 concentrations varied between ca. 1 and 40 μg/m3 depending on the region, with the highest concentrations observed in China and India, and lower concentrations in Europe and North America. The relative contribution of anthropogenic emission source sectors to PM2.5 concentrations varies between the regions. European PM pollution is mainly influenced by the agricultural and residential sectors, while the major contributing sectors to PM pollution in Asia and the emerging economies are the power generation, industrial and residential sectors. We also evaluate the emission sectors and emission regions in which pollution reduction measures would lead to the largest improvement on the overall air quality. We show that in order to improve air quality, regional policies should be implemented (e.g. in Europe) due to the transboundary features of PM pollution. In addition, we investigate emission inventory uncertainties and their propagation to PM2.5 concentrations, in order to identify the most effective strategies to be implemented at sector and regional level to improve emission inventories knowledge and air quality. We show that the uncertainty of PM concentrations depends not only on the uncertainty of local emission inventories but also on that of the surrounding regions. Finally, we propagate emission inventories uncertainty to PM concentrations and health impacts.

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 5165-5186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Crippa ◽  
Greet Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
Diego Guizzardi ◽  
Rita Van Dingenen ◽  
Frank Dentener

Abstract. In this work we couple the HTAP_v2.2 global air pollutant emission inventory with the global source receptor model TM5-FASST to evaluate the relative contributions of the major anthropogenic emission sources (power generation, industry, ground transport, residential, agriculture and international shipping) to air quality and human health in 2010. We focus on particulate matter (PM) concentrations because of the relative importance of PM2.5 emissions in populated areas and the well-documented cumulative negative effects on human health. We estimate that in 2010, depending on the region, annual averaged anthropogenic PM2.5 concentrations varied between ca. 1 and 40 µg m−3, with the highest concentrations observed in China and India, and lower concentrations in Europe and North America. The relative contribution of anthropogenic emission sources to PM2.5 concentrations varies between the regions. European PM pollution is mainly influenced by the agricultural and residential sectors, while the major contributing sectors to PM pollution in Asia and the emerging economies are the power generation, industrial and residential sectors. We also evaluate the emission sectors and emission regions in which pollution reduction measures would lead to the largest improvement on the overall air quality. We show that air quality improvements would require regional policies, in addition to local- and urban-scale measures, due to the transboundary features of PM pollution. We investigate emission inventory uncertainties and their propagation to PM2.5 concentrations, in order to identify the most effective strategies to be implemented at sector and regional level to improve emission inventories, knowledge and air quality modelling. We show that the uncertainty of PM concentrations depends not only on the uncertainty of local emission inventories, but also on that of the surrounding regions. Countries with high emission uncertainties are often impacted by the uncertainty of pollution coming from surrounding regions, highlighting the need for effective efforts in improving emissions not only within a region but also from extra-regional sources. Finally, we propagate emission inventory uncertainty to PM concentrations and health impacts. We estimate 2.1 million premature deaths per year with an uncertainty of more than 1 million premature deaths per year due to the uncertainty associated only with the emissions.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Sunling Gong ◽  
Shaofei Kong ◽  
Lili Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Air pollutant emissions play a determinant role in deteriorating air quality. However, an uncertainty in emission inventories is still the key problem for modeling air pollution. In this study, an updated emission inventory of coal-fired power plants (UEIPP) based on online monitoring data in Jiangsu province of East China for the year of 2012 was implemented in the widely used Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC). By employing the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), two simulations were executed to assess the atmospheric environmental change by using the original MEIC emission inventory and the MEIC inventory with the UEIPP. A synthetic analysis shows that (1) compared to the power emissions of MEIC, PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and NOx were lower, and CO, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and NMVOCs were higher in the UEIPP, reflecting a large discrepancy in the power emissions over East China; (2) In accordance with the changes of UEIPP, the modeled concentrations were reduced for SO2 and NO2, and increased for most areas of primary OC, BC and CO, whose concentrations in atmosphere are highly dependent on emission changes. (3) Interestingly, when the UEIPP was used, the atmospheric oxidizing capacity significantly reinforced, reflecting by increased oxidizing agents, e.g. O3 and OH, thus directly strengthened the chemical production from SO2 and NOx to sulfate and nitrate, which offset the reduction of primary PM2.5 emissions especially in the haze days. This study indicated the importance of updating air pollutant emission inventories in simulating the complex atmospheric environment changes with the implications on air quality and environmental changes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 2065-2079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Sunling Gong ◽  
Shaofei Kong ◽  
Lili Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Air pollutant emissions play a determinant role in deteriorating air quality. However, an uncertainty in emission inventories is still the key problem for modeling air pollution. In this study, an updated emission inventory of coal-fired power plants (UEIPP) based on online monitoring data in Jiangsu Province of East China for the year of 2012 was implemented in the widely used Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC). By employing the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), two simulation experiments were executed to assess the atmospheric environment change by using the original MEIC emission inventory and the MEIC inventory with the UEIPP. A synthetic analysis shows that power plant emissions of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and NOx were lower, and CO, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and NMVOCs (non-methane volatile organic compounds) were higher in UEIPP relative to those in MEIC, reflecting a large discrepancy in the power plant emissions over East China. In accordance with the changes in UEIPP, the modeled concentrations were reduced for SO2 and NO2, and increased for most areas of primary OC, BC, and CO. Interestingly, when the UEIPP was used, the atmospheric oxidizing capacity significantly reinforced. This was reflected by increased oxidizing agents, e.g., O3 and OH, thus directly strengthening the chemical production from SO2 and NOx to sulfate and nitrate, respectively, which offset the reduction of primary PM2.5 emissions especially on haze days. This study indicates the importance of updating air pollutant emission inventories in simulating the complex atmospheric environment changes with implications on air quality and environmental changes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Huang ◽  
Song Liu ◽  
Zeyuan Yang ◽  
Jia Xing ◽  
Jia Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. The inaccuracy of anthropogenic emission inventory on a high-resolution scale due to insufficient basic data is one of the major reasons for the deviation between air quality model and observation results. A bottom-up approach, as a typical emission inventory estimation approach, requires a lot of human labor and material resources, and a top-down approach focuses on individual pollutants that can be measured directly and relies heavily on traditional numerical modelling. Lately, deep neural network has achieved rapid development due to its high efficiency and non-linear expression ability. In this study, we proposed a novel method to model the dual relationship between emission inventory and pollution concentration for emission inventory estimation. Specifically, we utilized a neural network based comprehensive chemical transport model (NN-CTM) to learn the complex correlation between emission and air pollution. We further updated the emission inventory based on backpropagating the gradient of the loss function measuring the deviation between NN-CTM and observations from surface monitors. We first mimicked the CTM model with neural networks (NN) and achieved a relatively good representation of CTM with similarity reaching 95 %. To reduce the gap between CTM and observations, the NN model would suggest an updated emission of NOx, NH3, SO2, VOC and primary PM2.5 which changes by −1.34 %, −2.65 %, −11.66 %, −19.19 % and 3.51 %, respectively, on average of China. Such ratios of NOx and PM2.5 are even higher (~10 %) particularly in Northwest China where suffers from large uncertainties in original emissions. The updated emission inventory can improve model performance and make it closer to observations. The mean absolute error for NO2, SO2, O3 and PM2.5 concentrations are reduced significantly by about 10 %~20 %, indicating the high feasibility of NN-CTM in terms of significantly improving both the accuracy of emission inventory as well as the performance of air quality model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 407-418
Author(s):  
Jiyoung Gong ◽  
Changsub Shim ◽  
Ki-Chul Choi ◽  
Sungyong Gong

Objectives : This study aims to discuss air quality policy improvement that reflect regional characteristics through analyzing recent PM2.5 concentration, air pollutant emission sources and those contributions to annual PM2.5 concentration in Chungcheong region (Daejeon Metropolitan City, Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City, the Province of Chungcheongnam-do, and Chungcheongbuk-do) in South Korea. In addition, we identified the characteristics of the PM2.5 pollution at the level of fundamental local government, and demonstrated the number of vulnerable population exposed to high level of PM2.5 concentration in order to propose policy implications in Chungcheong region.Methods : Based on the national emissions estimates (CAPSS: Clean Air Policy Support System) and air quality modelling system, major sectors/sources of air pollutants emission and national contributions of PM2.5 concentrations in Chungcheong region were analyzed. Furthermore, the study identified the number of people exposed to the higher PM2.5 concentrations (>25 µg/m3) by the measurement data and demographics available in 2019.Results and Discussion : The national air pollutants emissions in Chungcheong region were emitted from Chungnam (about 59% of NOx emission volume, 89% of SOx, 70% of NH3, 54% of VOCs, 79% of PM2.5, and 68% of TSP respectively), mainly from industry, domestic, energy, and road sector. According to the results of the air quality modelling, Chungcheong region also had the largest contribution on the average annual PM2.5 concentration in South Korea (27%). Chungnam emitted the largest emission volume of air pollutants, mainly from industry and power generation sectors (especially in Dangjin, Seosan, and Boryeong), while Asan, Yesan, Hongseong, and Cheongyang were classified as the areas with higher PM2.5 concentrations (>25 µg/m3), showing a gap between the areas with large emission volume and high concentration. Chungbuk and Sejong had higher annual PM2.5 concentration due to the influence of external sources and their geographical characteristics. The largest vulnerable population (over 65 years old and under 18 years old) exposed to high PM2.5 concentrations annually lived in Cheongju. Chungbuk had about 40% more air pollutant emission volume than Chungnam, but about 17% more vulnerable population.Conclusions : At the current stage of “master plan” in Chungcheong region, it is important to mitigate air pollutants emissions on the basis of the local emissions characteristic at the level of fundamental local government (such as industry sector in Dangjin, Seosan, and Danyang/ Domestic buring in Cheongju, Cheonan, and Daejeon/power generation in Boryeong, Taean and Dangjin/ road in Daejeon, Cheongju, and Cheoan). In addition, Chungbuk requires management of the areas with higher PM2.5 concentration such as Goesan, Boeun, Okcheon, and Yeongdong located outside “air control zone”. To reduce high level of PM2.5 concentration in Chungcheong region, cooperation with neighboring local governments such as Gyeonggi Province is crucial, and policy solutions are needed between the stakeholders to resolve the disparity issues between areas with larger emission volume and higher PM2.5 concentration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 4641-4654
Author(s):  
Lin Huang ◽  
Song Liu ◽  
Zeyuan Yang ◽  
Jia Xing ◽  
Jia Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. The inaccuracy of anthropogenic emission inventories on a high-resolution scale due to insufficient basic data is one of the major reasons for the deviation between air quality model and observation results. A bottom-up approach, which is a typical emission inventory estimation method, requires a lot of human labor and material resources, whereas a top-down approach focuses on individual pollutants that can be measured directly as well as relying heavily on traditional numerical modeling. Lately, the deep neural network approach has achieved rapid development due to its high efficiency and nonlinear expression ability. In this study, we proposed a novel method to model the dual relationship between an emission inventory and pollution concentrations for emission inventory estimation. Specifically, we utilized a neural-network-based comprehensive chemical transport model (NN-CTM) to explore the complex correlation between emission and air pollution. We further updated the emission inventory based on back-propagating the gradient of the loss function measuring the deviation between NN-CTM and observations from surface monitors. We first mimicked the CTM model with neural networks (NNs) and achieved a relatively good representation of the CTM, with similarity reaching 95 %. To reduce the gap between the CTM and observations, the NN model suggests updated emissions of NOx, NH3, SO2, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and primary PM2.5 changing, on average, by −1.34 %, −2.65 %, −11.66 %, −19.19 % and 3.51 %, respectively, in China for 2015. Such ratios of NOx and PM2.5 are even higher (∼ 10 %) in regions that suffer from large uncertainties in original emissions, such as Northwest China. The updated emission inventory can improve model performance and make it closer to observations. The mean absolute error for NO2, SO2, O3 and PM2.5 concentrations are reduced significantly (by about 10 %–20 %), indicating the high feasibility of NN-CTM in terms of significantly improving both the accuracy of the emission inventory and the performance of the air quality model.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Younha Kim ◽  
Jung-hun Woo ◽  
Youjung Jang ◽  
Minwoo Park ◽  
Bomi Kim ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;Concentration of air pollutants such as tropospheric ozone and aerosols are mainly affected by meteorological variables and emissions. East Asia has large amount of anthropogenic and natural air pollutant emissions and has been putting lots of efforts to improve air quality. In order to seek effective ways to mitigate future air pollution, it is essential to understand the current emissions and their impacts on air quality. Emission inventory is one of the key datasets required to understand air quality and find ways to improve it. Amounts and spatial-temporal distributions of emissions are, however, not easy to estimate due to their complicate nature, therefore introduce significant uncertainties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this study, we had developed an updated version of our Asian emissions inventory, named NIER/KU-CREATE (Comprehensive Regional Emissions inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment) in support of climate-air quality study. We first inter-compare multiple bottom-up inventories to understand discrepancies among the dataset(sectoral, spatial). We then inter-compare those bottom-up emissions to the satellite-based top-down emission estimates to understand uncertainties of the databases. The bottom-up emission inventories used for this study are: CREATE, MEIC(Multiresolution Emission Inventory for China), REAS (Regional Emission inventory in ASia), and ECLIPSE(Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-Lived Pollutants). The satellite-derived top-down emission inventory had been acquired from the DECSO (Daily Emission derived Constrained by Satellite Observations) algorithm data from the GlobEmissions website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The analysis showed that some discrepancies, in terms of emission amounts, sectoral shares and spatial distribution patterns, exist among the datasets. We analyzed further to find out which parameters could affect more on those discrepancies. Co-analysis of top-down and bottom-up emissions inventory help us to evaluate emissions amount and spatial distribution. These analysis are helpful for the development of more consistent and reliable inventories with the aim of reducing the uncertainties in air quality study. More results of evaluation of emissions will be presented on site.&amp;#160; &amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgements : This work was supported by National Institute of Environment Research (NIER-2019-03-02-005), Korea Environment Industry &amp; Technology Institute(KEITI) through Public Technology Program based on Environmental Policy Program, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment(MOE)(2019000160007). This research was supported by the National Strategic Project-Fine particle of the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT), the Ministry of Environment(ME), and the Ministry of Health and Welfare(MOHW) (NRF-2017M3D8A1092022).&lt;/p&gt;


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Xie ◽  
Hancheng Dai ◽  
Yanxu Zhang ◽  
Tatsuya Hanaoka ◽  
Toshihiko Masui

Abstract. Many studies have reported associations between ozone pollution and morbidity and mortality, but few studies focus on the health and economic effects at China's regional level. This study evaluates the ozone pollution-related health impacts on China's national and provincial economy and compares them with the impacts from PM2.5. We also explore the mitigation potential across 30 provinces of China. An integrated approach is developed that combines an air pollutant emission projection model (GAINS), an air quality model (GEOS-Chem), a health model using the latest exposure-response functions, medical prices and value of statistical life (VSL), and a general equilibrium model (CGE). Results show that lower income western provinces encounter severer health impacts and economic burdens due to high natural background levels of ozone pollution, whereas the impact in southern and central provinces is relatively lower. Without a control policy, in 2030 China will experience a 4.24 billion USD Gross Domestic Production (GDP) loss (equivalent to 0.034 %), and a 285 billion USD (equivalent to 2.34 % of GDP) life loss. In contrast, with a control policy, the GDP and VSLs loss will be reduced to 3.72 (0.030 %) and 242 billion USD (1.99 %), respectively. We conclude that health and economic impacts of ozone pollution are significantly lower than PM2.5, but are much more difficult to mitigate. The Chinese government should promote the air pollution control policies that jointly reduce both PM2.5 pollution and ozone pollution, and the public should adjust their lifestyle according to the air quality information.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianlin Hu ◽  
Xun Li ◽  
Lin Huang ◽  
Qi Ying ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Accurate exposure estimates are required for health effects analyses of severe air pollution in China. Chemical transport models (CTMs) are widely used tools to provide detailed information of spatial distribution, chemical composition, particle size fractions, and source origins of pollutants. The accuracy of CTMs' predictions in China is largely affected by the uncertainties of public available emission inventories. The Community Multi-scale Air Quality model (CMAQ) with meteorological inputs from the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) were used in this study to simulate air quality in China in 2013. Four sets of simulations were conducted with four different anthropogenic emission inventories, including the Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC), the Emission Inventory for China by School of Environment at Tsinghua University (SOE), the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), and the Regional Emission inventory in Asia version 2 (REAS2). Model performance was evaluated against available observation data from 422 sites in 60 cities across China. Model predictions of O3 and PM2.5 with the four inventories generally meet the criteria of model performance, but difference exists in different pollutants and different regions among the inventories. Ensemble predictions were calculated by linearly combining the results from different inventories under the constraint that sum of the squared errors between the ensemble results and the observations from all the cities was minimized. The ensemble annual concentrations show improved agreement with observations in most cities. The mean fractional bias (MFB) and mean fractional errors (MFE) of the ensemble predicted annual PM2.5 at the 60 cities are −0.11 and 0.24, respectively, which are better than the MFB (−0.25–−0.16) and MFE (0.26–0.31) of individual simulations. The ensemble annual 1-hour peak O3 (O3-1 h) concentrations are also improved, with mean normalized bias (MNB) of 0.03 and mean normalized errors (MNE) of 0.14, compared to MNB of 0.06–0.19 and MNE of 0.16–0.22 of the individual predictions. The ensemble predictions agree better with observations with daily, monthly, and annual averaging times in all regions of China for both PM2.5 and O3-1 h. The study demonstrates that ensemble predictions by combining predictions from individual emission inventories can improve the accuracy of predicted temporal and spatial distributions of air pollutants. This study is the first ensemble model study in China using multiple emission inventories and the results are publicly available for future health effects studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
pp. 1110-1121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianlei Lang ◽  
Jingjing Tian ◽  
Ying Zhou ◽  
Kanghong Li ◽  
Dongsheng Chen ◽  
...  

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