Anthropogenic black carbon and fine aerosol distribution over Europe

Abstract

[1] We present a model simulation for the year 1995 accounting for primary particles, which are an important component of fine aerosols over Europe. A new emission inventory for black carbon (BC) was developed on the basis of the recent European emission inventory of anthropogenic primary particulate matter (Coordinated European Programme on Particulate Matter Emission Inventories, Projections and Guidance (CEPMEIP)). The annual BC emissions of Europe and the former Soviet Union for 1995 are estimated at 0.47 and 0.26 Tg C, respectively, with highest contributions from transport (off-road and onroad) and households. Modeled BC concentrations range from 0.05 mg/m 3 in remote regions to more than 1 mg/m 3 over densely populated areas. The modeled BC concentration is about 25% of the total primary aerosol concentration. The primary aerosol fields were combined with previously calculated secondary aerosol concentrations to obtain an estimate of the total anthropogenic fine aerosol distribution. Modeled BC levels contribute only 4-10% to fine aerosol mass, whereas sulphate and nitrate contribute 25-50 and 5-35%, respectively. Comparison with experimental data revealed that the model underestimates PM2.5 levels, mostly caused by the underprediction of total carbonaceous material (BC and OC) by a factor of $2. The underestimation can partly be explained by the influence of local emissions, measurement uncertainties, natural sources, and representation of wet deposition. However, the uncertainties associated with the emission inventory for BC (and total PM) may be the most important cause for the discrepancy. In comparison with previous studies, our BC emission estimate is a factor of 2 lower, caused by the choice of more recent emission factors. Therefore a better knowledge of emission factors is urgently needed to estimate the BC (and PM) emissions reliably.

Global anthropogenic emissions of particulate matter including black carbon

“…For Europe (including European part of Russia), the published studies of BC and OC Kupiainen and Klimont, 2007;Schaap et al, 2004;see Table S8.1) compare well showing differences within ±10 % or less with the exception of EDGAR (Janssens-Maenhout et al, 2015), which shows much lower emissions but does not include any Russian territory. At the level of whole of Europe, GAINS calculates similar PM 10 and PM 2.5 emissions as officially reported to UNECE LRTAP Convention (www.ceip.at), while the EDGAR estimate is nearly 40 % lower for both species but does not include Russia (Table S8.1).…”

Black carbon or brown carbon? The nature of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols

“…More than 50 inter-method and inter-laboratory comparisons for the determination of EC a or BC e have been conducted, showing typical differences of a factor of 2 between methods, but sometimes even discrepancies of a factor of 7 . In spite of this ongoing controversy and with few exceptions (e.g., Streets et al, 2001;Bond et al, 2004), "BC" is very often considered a single, well-defined and well-determined entity throughout the troposphere, especially in emission inventories, radiative transfer, and climate models, which has a uniform composition and physical properties approaching those of pure carbon black (e.g., Hansen et al, 2000;Chung and Seinfeld, 2002;Schaap et al, 2004;Wang, 2004;Hansen et al, 2005).…”

PM measurement campaign HOVERT in the Greater Berlin area: model evaluation with chemically specified particulate matter observations for a one year period

“…Preliminary comparisons of simulations with the EMEP model in 2002 and 2003 with measurements for 14 mainly rural sites during July 2002 to April 2003 (one sample per week) show a model underestimation between a factor of 1.5 to 3 for rural sites (Tørseth et al, 2004;Yttri et al, 2005). Schaap et al (2004b) also find an EC underestimation with the LOTUS model by a factor of two and more for rural sites, using climatological observations (generally not taken at the same time as simulations). These underestimations are qualitatively in line with results from our study also showing a model underestimation for rural sites.…”

“…PM 10 emissions were split into a PM 2.5 and a coarse PM (PM 10 -PM 2.5 ) part, the PM 2.5 part was further split into mineral dust, EC and primary OC. EC fractions in PM 2.5 emissions for different SNAP sectors given in Table 1 were taken from Builtjes et al (2003) and are discussed in detail in Schaap et al (2004b). For primary OC, no such factors exist to our knowledge for Europe.…”

“…EC and OC have recently been introduced also in the Unified EMEP model (Tørseth et al, 2004); first evaluation with a limited set of data over Europe (five sites) showed a large underestimation of simulated EC and OC (typically by about a factor two and more), which could, following the authors, be due to missing emission sources in the used inventory (Tørseth et al, 2004;Yttry et al, 2005). Schaap et al (2004b) derived an emission inventory for EC and primary fine aerosol for Europe, and used it to simulate EC and primary PM distributions. They found a model underestimation of a factor of two or more with respect to available EC measurements, which they also attributed to probably too low emissions.…”