TY - JOUR
T1 - The state of science on severe air pollution episodes
T2 - Quantitative and qualitative analysis
AU - Morawska, Lidia
AU - Zhu, Tong
AU - Liu, Nairui
AU - Amouei Torkmahalleh, Mehdi
AU - de Fatima Andrade, Maria
AU - Barratt, Benjamin
AU - Broomandi, Parya
AU - Buonanno, Giorgio
AU - Carlos Belalcazar Ceron, Luis
AU - Chen, Jianmin
AU - Cheng, Yan
AU - Evans, Greg
AU - Gavidia, Mario
AU - Guo, Hai
AU - Hanigan, Ivan
AU - Hu, Min
AU - Jeong, Cheol H.
AU - Kelly, Frank
AU - Gallardo, Laura
AU - Kumar, Prashant
AU - Lyu, Xiaopu
AU - Mullins, Benjamin J.
AU - Nordstrøm, Claus
AU - Pereira, Gavin
AU - Querol, Xavier
AU - Yezid Rojas Roa, Nestor
AU - Russell, Armistead
AU - Thompson, Helen
AU - Wang, Hao
AU - Wang, Lina
AU - Wang, Tao
AU - Wierzbicka, Aneta
AU - Xue, Tao
AU - Ye, Celine
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the: Australia-China Centre on Air Quality Science and Management (ACC-AQSM) to undertake and conduct this study; Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) in Western Australia for access to the data; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and FEDER funds under the project HOUSE (CGL2016-78594-R), and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR 2017 SGR41); Climate and Resilient Research (FONDAP 15110009), and the PAPILA (Prediction of Air Pollution in Latin America and the Caribbean) project (ID: 777544, H2020-EU.1.3.3.); ASAP-Delhi project (An Integrated Study of Air Pollutant Sources in the Delhi National Capital Region) funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council under the grant number NE/P016510/1 ; Stockholm Air and Noise Analysis at Stockholm City Environmental Department for the provision of the data; National Key R&D Program of China via grant No. 2017YFC0212001; National Air Pollution Surveillance (NAPS) program in Canada for data on PM 2.5 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Severe episodic air pollution blankets entire cities and regions and have a profound impact on humans and their activities. We compiled daily fine particle (PM2.5) data from 100 cities in five continents, investigated the trends of number, frequency, and duration of pollution episodes, and compared these with the baseline trend in air pollution. We showed that the factors contributing to these events are complex; however, long-term measures to abate emissions from all anthropogenic sources at all times is also the most efficient way to reduce the occurrence of severe air pollution events. In the short term, accurate forecasting systems of such events based on the meteorological conditions favouring their occurrence, together with effective emergency mitigation of anthropogenic sources, may lessen their magnitude and/or duration. However, there is no clear way of preventing events caused by natural sources affected by climate change, such as wildfires and desert dust outbreaks.
AB - Severe episodic air pollution blankets entire cities and regions and have a profound impact on humans and their activities. We compiled daily fine particle (PM2.5) data from 100 cities in five continents, investigated the trends of number, frequency, and duration of pollution episodes, and compared these with the baseline trend in air pollution. We showed that the factors contributing to these events are complex; however, long-term measures to abate emissions from all anthropogenic sources at all times is also the most efficient way to reduce the occurrence of severe air pollution events. In the short term, accurate forecasting systems of such events based on the meteorological conditions favouring their occurrence, together with effective emergency mitigation of anthropogenic sources, may lessen their magnitude and/or duration. However, there is no clear way of preventing events caused by natural sources affected by climate change, such as wildfires and desert dust outbreaks.
KW - Severe air pollution events
KW - Pollution episodes
KW - Urban air pollution
KW - Pollution emissions
KW - Formation of secondary pollutants
KW - Mitigating air pollutants
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108872238&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.envint.2021.106732
DO - 10.1016/j.envint.2021.106732
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 34197974
AN - SCOPUS:85108872238
SN - 0160-4120
VL - 156
JO - Environment International
JF - Environment International
M1 - 106732
ER -
