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Abstract: Particularly during the cold weather season, countries of the Southeast Europe are experiencing some of the poorest air quality in the world due to the extensive use of solid fuels and old vehicle fleets. The city of Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) situated within a basin surrounded by mountains. In the winter months (domestic heating season), topography and meteorology cause the pollutants to be trapped within the city basin. Countries of the Southeast Europe lack state-of-the-art atmospheric sciences research and access to sophisticated instrumentation and methodology, despite high levels of ambient pollution and position within the European Union (EU) borders, making it imperative to understand the emission sources, processing and the adverse health effects of atmospheric aerosol pollution.                This presentation will highlight the field measurements in Central and Southeast Europe during the Sarajevo Canton Winter Field Campaign 2017-2018 (SAFICA) and Sarajevo Aerosol Experiment 2022-2023 (SAAERO) projects, centered at the Sarajevo Bjelave supersite. Both projects were envisioned to produce crucial, not previously available information about aerosol emission sources and atmospheric transformations through a combination of online field and offline laboratory measurements. Online measurements during a) SAFICA and b) SAAERO included, a) black carbon, particle number and size distribution, and b) carbonaceous species, elemental composition and bulk chemical composition. SAAERO online measurements also included stationary and mobile measurements of gas- and particle-phase species on board the mobile laboratory in Sarajevo and Zenica, BiH, as well as in Ljubljana, Slovenia and Zagreb, Croatia. Finally, extended SAAERO project included measurements of black carbon at three additional urban centers: Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Belgrade, Serbia, enabling the first comparison of urban air quality in Central and Southeast Europe between two EU and two non-EU capitals. During both projects, laboratory aerosol analyses determined aerosol bulk chemical composition, selected elements (Huremović et al., 2020; Žero et al., 2022) and molecular species (Pehnec et al., 2020). Aerosol chemical composition determined by aerosol mass spectrometry was further analyzed by Positive Matrix Factorization to separate organic aerosol into subtypes characteristic of specific sources and atmospheric processes. Aerosol oxidative potential was also determined to evaluate aerosol ability to generate reactive oxygen species. Sarajevo and Belgrade have high ambient loadings of aerosol and black carbon, indicative of strong and diverse combustion sources and a major public health hazard. Finally, aerosol surface concentrations will be discussed in the context of European air quality. We thank Jasminka Džepina, Magee Scientific/Aerosol, TSI and Aerodyne for support. We acknowledge the contribution of the COST Action CA16109 COLOSSAL and SEE Change Net. KDž and ASHP acknowledge the grant by the Swiss NSF (Scientific Exchanges IZSEZ0_189495), KDž, GM and ASHP European Commission SAAERO grant (EU H2020 MSCA-IF 2020 #101028909), GM Slovenian ARIS grant (P1-0385), SF Croatian HRZZ grant (BiREADI IP-2018-01-3105), and AG, MR, MI, BA and IBJ Slovenian ARIS grant (L1-4386). Pehnec, G., et al., Sci. Tot. Environ., 734, 139414, 2020. Huremović, J., et al., Air Qual. Atmos. Health, 13, 965–976, 2020. Žero, S., Žužul, S., et al., Environ. Sci. Technol., 56, 7052−7062, 2022.
Keywords: air pollution, sources of pollution, PMF
Published in RUNG: 18.03.2024; Views: 1310; Downloads: 4
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Keywords: black carbon, emission factor, source apportionment
Published in RUNG: 24.01.2023; Views: 2310; Downloads: 22
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Abstract: Residential wood combustion is a widespread practice in Europe with a serious impact on air quality, especially in mountainous areas. While there is a significant number of studies conducted in deep urbanized valleys and basins, little is known about the air pollution processes in rural shallow hollows, where around 30 % of the people in mountainous areas across Europe live. We aim to determine the influence of ground temperature inversions on wood combustion aerosol pollution in hilly, rural areas. The study uses Retje karst hollow (Loški Potok, Slovenia) as a representative site for mountainous and hilly rural areas in central and south-eastern Europe with residential wood combustion. Sampling with a mobile monitoring platform along the hollow was performed in December 2017 and January 2018. The backpack mobile monitoring platform was used for the determination of equivalent black carbon (eBC) and particulate matter (PM) mass concentrations along the hollow. To ensure high quality of mobile measurement data, intercomparisons of mobile instruments with reference instruments were performed at two air quality stations during every run. Our study showed that aerosol pollution events in the relief depression were associated with high local emission intensities originating almost entirely from residential wood burning and shallow temperature inversions (58 m on average). The eBC and PM mass concentrations showed stronger associations with the potential temperature gradient (R2=0.8) than with any other meteorological parameters taken into account (ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and precipitation). The strong association between the potential temperature gradient and pollutant concentrations suggests that even a small number of emission sources (total 243 households in the studied hollow) in similar hilly and mountainous rural areas with frequent temperature inversions can significantly increase the levels of eBC and PM and deteriorate local air quality. During temperature inversions the measured mean eBC and PM2.5 mass concentrations in the whole hollow were as high as 4.5±2.6 and 48.0 ± 27.7 µg m−3, respectively, which is comparable to larger European urban centres.
Keywords: air pollution, black carbon, sources, temperature inversion, mountainous area
Published in RUNG: 03.05.2022; Views: 2194; Downloads: 0
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Keywords: mineral dust, concentration, aerosols, air quality
Published in RUNG: 17.11.2021; Views: 2428; Downloads: 18
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Keywords: total carbon, black carbon, brown carbon
Published in RUNG: 17.11.2021; Views: 2663; Downloads: 55
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