Air Pollution Dependency on Climate Variability and Source Region : Past, Current and Future Air Pollution Scenarios over Europe

Sammanfattning: The main objectives of this thesis were to investigate the dependency of European air pollution on climate variability and emission source region. Calculations with a chemistry transport model (CTM) were conducted to investigate the influence of climate variability. The CTM was forced by both simulated past (a re-analysis spanning 1958-2001) and future (a climate simulation spanning 1961-2100) meteorology keeping anthropogenic emissions constant. To investigate the influence of emission source region emissions were varied in western, eastern and northern Europe in seven-year (1997-2003) simulations.The main conclusions in this thesis are§         There is variability in air pollution due to climate variability on time scales from year to year to decades and long-term trends. Hence, what is measured now will not be valid in a decade, or even next year.§         Interannual variability in air pollution due to climate variability is greater than interannual variability in anthropogenic emissions.§         The extreme conditions in 2003, resulting in elevated surface O3 concentrations, could be an indication on what we can expect in the future.§         The trend in surface O3 over the past due to climate change is similar to the projected trend due to future climate change: increasing in south-western and central Europe and decreasing in north-eastern Europe.§         Changes in isoprene emissions and dry deposition dependency on soil moisture are of importance for changes in surface O3 in central and southern Europe. It is vital to include these processes, especially the latter in climate change effect studies of surface O3.§         This work indicates that it is of greater importance for health benefits of the European population to reduce primary PM emissions than precursors of secondary inorganic aerosol under the assumption of higher relative risk for primary PM. This is especially the case in western Europe.