To what extent the traffic restriction policies applied in Barcelona city can improve its air quality?

Barcelona city (Spain) is applying a series of traffic restriction measures that aim at renewing and reducing the amount of circulating vehicles to improve air quality. The measures include changes in the built environment to reduce private vehicle space in specific areas through the so-called "superblocks" and tactical urban planning actions, along with the implementation of a city-wide Low Emission Zone (LEZ) that restricts the entry of the most polluting vehicles to the city. Our study quantifies the impact of these measures in the greater area of Barcelona combining a coupled macroscopic traffic and pollutant emission model with a multi-scale air quality model. Our modelling system allows estimating the effect of different traffic restrictions upon traffic and the associated emissions and air quality levels at a very high resolution (20 m). The measures were evaluated both individually and collectively to assess both their relative and overall impact upon emissions and air quality. We show that in the absence of traffic demand reductions, the application of isolated measures that reduce private vehicle space, either through superblocks or tactical urban planning, have no overall emission impacts; only localized street-level NOx positive and negative changes (±17%) are found due to traffic re-routing and the generation of new bottlenecks. It is only when these measures are combined with optimistic fleet renewal as a result of the LEZ implementation and demand reductions, that relevant global emission reductions in NOx are obtained (-13% and -30%, respectively) with estimated NO2 reductions of -36% and -23% at the two traffic air quality monitoring stations. Despite the potential improvements, our simulations suggest that current measures are insufficient to comply with EU air quality standards and that further traffic restriction policies to reduce traffic demand are needed.

Understanding temporal and spatial changes of O3 or NO2 concentrations combining multivariate data analysis methods and air quality transport models.

The application of the multivariate curve resolution method to the analysis of temporal and spatial data variability of hourly measured O3 and NO2 concentrations at nineteen air quality monitoring stations across Catalonia, Spain, during 2015 is shown. Data analyzed included ground-based experimental measurements and predicted concentrations by the CALIOPE air quality modelling system at three horizontal resolutions (Europe at 12 × 12 km2, Iberian Peninsula at 4 × 4 km2 and Catalonia at 1 × 1 km2). Results obtained in the analysis of these different data sets allowed a better understanding of O3 and NO2 concentration changes as a sum of a small number of different contributions related to daily sunlight radiation, seasonal dynamics, traffic emission patterns, and local station environments (urban, suburban and rural). The evaluation of O3 and NO2 concentrations predicted by the CALIOPE system revealed some differences among data sets at different spatial resolutions. NO2 predictions, showed in general a better performance than O3 predictions for the three model resolutions, specially at urban stations. Our results confirmed that the application of the trilinearity constraint during the multivariate curve resolution factor analysis decomposition of the analyzed data sets is a useful tool to facilitate the understanding of the resolved variability sources.

Integrated assessment of air pollution using observations and modelling in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands).

The present study aims to analyse the atmospheric dynamics of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife region (Tenerife, Canary Islands). This area is defined by the presence of anthropogenic emissions (from a refinery, a port and road traffic) and by very specific meteorological and orographic conditions-it is a coastal area with a complex topography in which there is an interaction of regional atmospheric dynamics and a low thermal inversion layer. These factors lead to specific atmospheric pollution episodes, particularly in relation to SO2 and PM10. We applied a methodology to study these dynamics based on two complementary approaches: 1) the analysis of the observations from the air quality network stations and 2) simulation of atmospheric dynamics using the WRF-ARW/HERMESv2/CMAQ/BSC-DREAM8b and WRF-ARW/HYSPLIT modelling systems with a high spatial resolution (1×1 km(2)). The results of our study show that the refinery plume plays an important role in the maximum SO2 observed levels. The area of maximum impact of the refinery is confined to a radius of 3 km around this installation. A cluster analysis performed for the period: 1998-2011 identified six synoptic situations as predominant in the area. The episodes of air pollution by SO2 occur mainly in those with more limited dispersive conditions, such as the northeastern recirculation, the northwestern recirculation and the western advection, which represent 33.70%, 11.23% and 18.63% of the meteorological situations affecting the study area in the year 2011, respectively. In the case of particulate matter, Saharan dust intrusions result in episodes with high levels of PM10 that may exceed the daily limit value in all measurement station; these episodes occur when the synoptic situation is from the east (3.29% of the situations during the year 2011).