EUROPEAN RESEARCHERS LAUNCH MEGA CAMPAIGN TO ASSESS URBAN AIR POLLUTION
Twenty research teams from across Europe are launching one of its largest pollution monitoring campaigns and are setting up sites in Île-de-France (a region containing the Paris metropolitan area) to investigate sources of particulate pollution in the urban environment. Their objective is to quantify and describe these sources using diverse methods such as ground-based observations at permanent sites or from mobile platforms.
The campaign is being carried out as part of the EU-funded MEGAPOLI (Megacities: emissions, urban, regional and global atmospheric pollution and climate effects, and integrated tools for assessment and mitigation) project. With €3.4 million in funding, MEGAPOLI is supported under the Environment (including climate change) Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
MEGAPOLI is coordinated by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and involves 22 partners from 12 European countries including the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK.
The researchers from two laboratories operated by L’Institut national des sciences de l’Univers (INSU) and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) say large conurbations (metropolitan areas) are being affected by particulate pollution, with air quality and human health bearing the brunt of the problem. Particulate pollution also impacts the climate on global and regional fronts.
But the challenge is determining and quantifying the sources of carbon particulates, which make up a large fraction of fine aerosols.
The project partners describe both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are direct emissions, generated by combustion processes that are not well quantified; secondary sources are particulates formed after the oxidation and condensation of initially volatile organic compounds.
The researchers selected Île-de-France as the location for the study because it has a rather high pollution load and a high population density; it also exemplifies conurbations in the temperate latitudes.
