Air Quality Assessment over Northern Italy for the reference year 2005

1. Air Quality Assessment over Northern Italy for the reference year 2005 MINNI & MEGAPOLI Teams: Sandro Finardi, Gino Briganti, Giuseppe Brusasca, Giuseppe Calori, Andrea Cappelletti, Matteo Costa, Alessio D’Allura, Mihaela Mircea, Giandomenico Pace, Anna Pederzoli Paola Radice, Camillo Silibello, Lina Vitali , Gabriele Zanini Mesoscale Modelling For Air Pollution Applications: Achievements And Challenges COST 728 Final Workshop, Geneva, 25-26 February 2010

2. Air Pollution hot spots in the EU PM10 O3 From EEA Report: Spatial assessment of PM10 and ozone concentrations in Europe (2005)

3. The MINNI Project: summary info MINNI is … … but alsoIntegrated National Model as a support for the International Negotiation on Air Pollution • Since 2002 funded by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and the Environment (ENEA) and the Italian Ministry for the Environment; • Leaded by ENEA in cooperation with ARIANET and IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis ).

4. The MINNI Project: ultimate objectives The objective of the project is to support policy makers in the elaboration and assessment of air pollution policies at international, national and local level, by means of the more recent understandings of the atmospheric processes. • Scenario Analysis for the Göteborg Protocol pollutants, O3 and PM (trans-boundary pollution); • Environment and health impact (acidification, impact on vegetation, effect of PM and ozone on human health); • Policy assessment and cost effectiveness of abatement measures; • Support to stakeholders and policy makers; • Creation of open meteorological and chemical database at national and regional level to support regional and local air quality analysis; • RAINS-Italy Integrated Assessment Model;

5. The MINNI Project: history 2002estimate emission, meteorological fields, deposition and air concentrations fields over Italy, with a spatial resolution of 20x20 km2 and a hourly time step for year 1999. 2005 increase space resolution to 4x4 km2, simulation of years 1999 and 2005. • 2008estimate emission, meteorological fields,deposition and air concentrations fields over Italy for 2003 and 2007. • development of new modules to estimate the contribution of: • sea salt, • desert dust, • impact of forest fires, • the actinic flux by a radiative transfer code (TUV). • field campaign to be realised in southern Italy May-June 2010

6. Available yearly simulations • Gridded emission fields • Meteorological fields • Concentration fields of major pollutants: • Years: 1999, 2005 • Time resolution: 1 hour • Space resolution: 20, 4 km • Vertical grid: • 12 levs (up to 4 km) 1999 • 16 levs (up to 10 km) 2005 Available MINNI Products

7. MINNI simulations features METEOROLOGY: 20km res. RAMS (nudging) 4km res. LAPS (diagnostic) AIR QUALITY: 20km & 4 km res. FARM One-way nested EMISSIONS: ISPRA 2005 top-down national inventory + EMEP BC: EMEP 2005 fields

8. NO2 – yearly average concentrations

9. O3 – yearly average concentrations

10. O3 – exceedances of maximum daily 8h running mean

11. PM10 – yearly average concentrations

12. PM10 – exceedances of daily average limit

13. Sahara Dust PM10 yearly average concentrations N° of episodes with Sahara dust contribution lager than 10 ug/m3 Data post-processed from Skiron/Dust forecast, University of Athens

14. NOx Emissions -> Megapoli MEGAPOLI MINNI MINNI: national top-down MEGAPOLI: “local” bottom-up

15. PM Emissions -> Megapoli MEGAPOLI MINNI MINNI: national top-down MEGAPOLI: “regional” bottom-up

16. Conclusions • MINNI 2005 Po Valley simulations allowed to reproduce NO2 yearly average concentrations and O3 8h averages distribution identifying areas affected by exeedances: main urban areas for NO2 and the whole plains for O3 • PM yearly average concentrations shows improvements in the reproduction of rural background concentrations while confirms underestimation in many urban background locations. • The number of exceedances of PM10 daily average concentration is generally underestimented. Only the critical areas of Milan and Padova-Venice are correctly identified. • Larger errors are observed over the western Po Valley (Piedmont), possibly due to the lower quality of meteorological fields. • Improvements expected from higher resolution emission inventories and inclusion of PM long range transport contribution should improve model results but don’t seem sufficient to match measured aerosol concentrations.

17. FARMNorthern Italy computational domain Terrain following coordinates

18. Yearly/Monthly mass balance Budget estimated from hourly balance terms computed runtime over model grid. Possible limits: • flow dynamic in the upper layers • top boundary conditions effects • 1 way nesting at lateral boundaries

19. CO Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

20. SO2 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

21. H2SO4 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

22. S products Monthly balance

23. NO Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

24. NO2 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

25. NO3 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

26. HNO3 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

27. PAN Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

28. NO2-PAN Monthly balance

29. O3 Gain/Inflow Loss/Outflow

30. O3 Monthly balance

31. Mass balance main features • Short lifetime species, like NO and NO2, emitted within the Po valley region are not exported to the surrounding regions on a yearly basis. • Primary pollutants with longer lifetime (e.g. CO) and secondary products like NO3, PAN and PM are significantly exported from model boundaries. • Relevant seasonal variation of mass balance and pollutants import/export features have been detected for sulfur compounds and some nitrogen compounds. • Candidate months for MEGAPOLI model simulations are December/January and June. • During these months the worst pollution episodes were observed during 2005.

32. Nested WG5 domains Po valley nested domains for MEGAPOLI WP5 simulations