Emission inventories and modeling requirements for the development of air quality plans. Application to Madrid (Spain)

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS• A comprehensive and flexible urban emission inventory was developed for Madrid.• Options for multi-scale consistency are discussed (from European to street level).• Urban background N0 2 concentration levels well described by CMAQ (MB -2.2 ug/m 3 ).• N0 2 concentration levels in Madrid are dominated by local traffic (up to 90%).• A 31% reduction of NO x emissions may allow Madrid meeting the N0 2 European standards. ABSTRACTModeling is an essential tool for the development of atmospheric emission abatement measures and air quality plans. Most often these plans are related to urban environments with high emission density and population exposure. However, air quality modeling in urban areas is a rather challenging task. As environmental standards become more stringent (e.g. European Directive 2008/50/EC), more reliable and sophisticated modeling tools are needed to simulate measures and plans that may effectively tackle air quality exceedances, common in large urban areas across Europe, particularly for N0 2 . This also implies that emission inventories must satisfy a number of conditions such as consistency across the spatial scales involved in the analysis, consistency with the emission inventories used for regulatory purposes and versatility to match the requirements of different air quality and emission projection models. This study reports the modeling activities carried out in Madrid (Spain) highlighting the atmospheric emission inventory development and preparation as an illustrative example of the combination of models and data needed to develop a consistent air quality plan at urban level. These included a series of source apportionment studies to define contributions from the international, national, regional and local sources in order to understand to what extent local authorities can enforce meaningful abatement measures. Moreover, source apportionment studies were conducted in order to define contributions from different sectors and to understand the maximum feasible air quality improvement that can be achieved by reducing emissions from those sectors, thus targeting emission reduction policies to the most relevant activities. Finally, an emission scenario reflecting the effect of such policies was developed and the associated air quality was modeled.

Using a Coupled Air Quality Modeling System for the Development of an Air Quality Plan in Madrid (Spain): Source Apportionment and Analysis Evaluation of Mitigation Measures

“…Results achieved are according with the same obtained for [27]. The urban metropolitan area of Madrid is strongly dominated by local sources, mainly traffic.…”

“…In the last years, local administrations have used models to prepare air quality plans in urban areas as the Plan Azul case. Models are able to provide the difference of pollutants concentration and a quantitative assessment of the effect of policies and mitigation plans [21]- [27].…”

Novel Decomposition Scheme for Characterizing Urban Air Quality with MODIS

“…Low R values (<10) signify low aerosol loading, but G values are much higher (∼70) than other components, signifying a large contribution of anthropogenic emissions (mostly vehicular) to urban aerosol levels. This has also been confirmed by Borge et al [48] as a violation of NO 2 standards. At certain events, air quality also tends to become very clean, as evidenced by transition from high G value to high B value in January-February of 2003, 2004, 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2016. Manila (Figure 7c) has very clean air with low aerosol emissions in the early part of the observation period.…”

Implementation of the Air Quality Monitoring Network at Agadir City in Morocco

“…Up to now, no single model can describe these processes consistently so a combination of models is needed to address such description. Moreover, the choice of the model is basically dependent on the purpose of the simulation [25].…”