Contribution and uncertainty of sectorial and regional emissions to regional and global PM 2.5 health impacts
2019
Abstract. In this work we couple the HTAP_v2.2 global air pollutant
emission inventory with the global source receptor model TM5-FASST to
evaluate the relative contributions of the major anthropogenic emission
sources (power generation, industry, ground transport, residential,
agriculture and international shipping) to air quality and human health in
2010. We focus on particulate matter (PM) concentrations because of the
relative importance of PM 2.5 emissions in populated areas and the
well-documented cumulative negative effects on human health. We estimate
that in 2010, depending on the region, annual averaged anthropogenic
PM 2.5 concentrations varied between ca. 1 and 40 µ g m −3 ,
with the highest concentrations observed in China and India, and lower
concentrations in Europe and North America. The relative contribution of
anthropogenic emission sources to PM 2.5 concentrations varies between
the regions. European PM pollution is mainly influenced by the agricultural
and residential sectors, while the major contributing sectors to PM
pollution in Asia and the emerging economies are the power generation,
industrial and residential sectors. We also evaluate the emission sectors
and emission regions in which pollution reduction measures would lead to the
largest improvement on the overall air quality. We show that air quality
improvements would require regional policies, in addition to local- and urban-scale measures, due to the transboundary features of PM pollution. We
investigate emission inventory uncertainties and their propagation to
PM 2.5 concentrations, in order to identify the most effective
strategies to be implemented at sector and regional level to improve
emission inventories, knowledge and air quality modelling. We show that the
uncertainty of PM concentrations depends not only on the uncertainty of
local emission inventories, but also on that of the surrounding regions.
Countries with high emission uncertainties are often impacted by the
uncertainty of pollution coming from surrounding regions, highlighting the
need for effective efforts in improving emissions not only within a region but
also from extra-regional sources. Finally, we propagate emission inventory uncertainty to PM concentrations and health impacts. We estimate 2.1 million
premature deaths per year with an uncertainty of more than 1 million premature
deaths per year due to the uncertainty associated only with the emissions.
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