Natural sources of atmospheric aerosols influencing air quality across Europe

Assessment of long-term measurements of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants in South-East Mediterranean

“…Our findings are also in agreement with results presented by Viana et al (2013) Table S1). As also stated earlier, the qualitative result (as pattern) of the PM 10 exceedances is also consistent with results reported by Gerassopoulos et al (2006) for the region of Crete.…”

“…Viana et al (2013) report a significant impact of natural episodes (e.g. African dust) on the air quality in Southern and Western Europe, while Michaelides et al (1999) report that dust events are commonly observed during the spring season over the Eastern…”

“…Furthermore, a number of studies (e.g. Goudie and Middleton, 2001;Gerasopoulos et al, 2006;Koulouri et al, 2008;Viana et al, 2013) investigated long-term monitoring data from stations in Southeast Europe to identify the main sources of PM 10 .…”

AIRUSE-LIFE +: estimation of natural source contributions to urban ambient air PM<sub>10</sub> and PM<sub>2. 5</sub> concentrations in southern Europe – implications to compliance with limit values

“…This background level shows regional variations, and in some cases (in particular for the southern European countries) naturally emitted PM may contribute significantly, causing even exceedances of air quality standards (Pey et al, 2013;Querol et al, 2009Querol et al, , 1998Rodriguez et al, 2001). The main natural sources affecting ambient PM levels are wind-blown soil dust, sea salt, wildfires, volcanic ash and biogenic aerosol (Viana et al, 2014).…”

Time series clustering for estimating particulate matter contributions and its use in quantifying impacts from deserts

“…The given definition in this work for the Temisas site assumes that the main sources contributing to this regime have a regional anthropogenic origin and that the impact from natural sources to the range of concentrations on the regime is present in a lesser proportion. This regime definition is based on the study of the work by Viana et al (2002Viana et al ( , 2014 and Rodríguez et al (2001).With respect to the rest of regimes, matrix A mentioned in Section 3.1 helps to clarify their behaviour and hence to give coherence to these definitions. The possible use of the quantity 2-1 instead of 2 is not recommended for obtaining the net load as it is derived from the estimation of two mean values (2 and 1) and therefore the difference is a rough estimation of the anthropogenic contributions.…”