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The Chernobyl nuclear accident is already well documented in respect to the technical details responsible for the event, as well as the emissions to the atmosphere. However what is of importance is to further discuss the lower and the upper atmosphere transport mechanisms that prevailed on both over the local and the long distance atmospheric environment. In this respect in the first part of the presentation a brief description of the accident is given alongside with some local meteorological details. Then an examination of the long distance atmospheric transport and the impacts on the environment is attempted. Although the Chernobyl accident is considered as the worst incident in the nuclear energy history, it was mainly restricted to the atmospheric environment only.

This paper reports on the first application of a Nord-Pas-de-Calais regional emission inventory to the CHIMERE-MM5 modelling system. Using statistical indexes, we compare computed data to hourly observations and daily maximum of ozone and PM concentration measured with the monitoring station network data period in order to evaluate the performance of the modelling system for the selected area. This comparison is presented for a coastal location (Dunkerque: 51.03° N/2.37° E) and an inland location (Lille: 50.63° N/3.07° E) during the June July summer 2006 period. The model gives an excellent reproduction of the daily ozone cycle both for inland and coastal region but underestimates (20 μg/m3 on average) the O3 hourly maxima over 180 μg/m3. The model underestimates the PM10 measured concentration and has difficulties to reproduce hourly maxima over 60 μg/m3 for both inland and coastal stations. The system has difficulties to reproduce O3 concentration when air masses flows are continental. The poor representation of monitoring coastal station for particles makes the system validation more delicate for this area. We recommend using high resolution (3 km) and grid nudging for the production meteorological data for the coastal location due to specific local dynamical conditions.

In the recent years the world science pays much attention to the atmospheric emission of methane which is the product of ongoing biological processes in soils, as well as to the content of relict gases of analogous origin in the frozen zone of the lithosphere and the possibility of their release to the atmosphere resulting from the degradation of perennially frozen deposits (PFD) upon climate warming. The problem of deep-buries gases emission to the atmosphere is given little attention despite the fact that to date extensive evidence and numerous indirect data have been accumulated which point to the migration of deep gases through strata of deposits to the atmosphere. It is possible that this process makes a substantial contribution to the global development of greenhouse effect.

Ionic fluxes in a semi-mature stand of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.), on a spodosol in eastern Ireland, were monitored over an eight-year period, 1991-1998. The paper focuses on the long-term viability of forests in this region. Input-output balances, proton budgets and critical loads suggest that the long-term sustainability of forests in the region is threatened unless atmospheric emissions of anthropogenic substances can be controlled.

Atmospheric emissions of sulphur have decreased remarkably in developed economies since the mid-1970s and form one of the success stories how environmental problems can be mitigated. Various empirical studies discovered an inverted U-shaped relationship between SO2 emissions or concentrations and the levels of income. However, these studies have been less successful in providing information on the main determinants of the reduction of sulphur emissions. Various possible explanations have been put forward, but these have not been tested sufficiently in empirical work.

This paper provides background information on a project commenced full-time by the author in October 1994, funded through a one-year ESRC Global Environmental Change Research Fellowship.

All economists are familiar with the case for Pigovian taxes. However, this policy paradigm has proven to be inadequate in concept and in practice. Therefore, it has rarely been implemented in actual tax measures (OECD, 1994). Conceptually, the Pigovian paradigm treats market failures arising from waste discharges into the environment as exceptional and occasional, but the laws of thermodynamics dictate that virtually all materials drawn into industrial processes will sooner or later be dissipated as wastes (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971). In fact, as this paper demonstrates, most of these materials are very quickly discharged as wastes into the air, into surface and underground water, or onto land. Thus, environmental externalities are ubiquitous and inevitable and occur at all stages of the life-cycle of “production” and “consumption”, as the Resources for the Future pointed out in a classic article 25 years ago (Ayres and Kneese, 1969) . Nonetheless, economists have not yet incorporated this fundamental fact into their models and analyses.

The evaluation of the impact of atmospheric emission sources on air quality is normally conducted by comparison with air quality standards, most commonly defined in terms of statistical parameters of the concentration distribution. The present work reviews the general configuration of the standards and its main implications in the simulation of ground level pollutant concentrations from the source by atmospheric transport and diffusion models, with particular emphasis on the Gaussian plume equation and on the criteria utilized for its application in deriving concentration values suitable for a direct comparison with the standards.

Among others, two areas of atmospheric physics are not yet studied satisfactorily: the unattenuated solar photon flux at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and atmospheric emissions.

Measurements of the composition of clouds have been made as part of a programme of tracking and sampling power plant plumes over the North Sea. CERL developed a centrifugal cloud water collector for these experiments.

If we look at the infrared sky between 1 and 1000 µm we observe several contributions to the background coming from different parts and/or epochs of the universe. We consider the problem of distinguishing between ‘local’ contributions (planetary and galactic dust, atmospheric emission, dashed lines) and the extragalactic backgrounds. In the figure are shown the computed emissions for rich clusters of galaxies (IRG) and integrated infrared galaxies (IRG). CMB is the cosmic microwave background.

This paper briefly reviews the preliminary results of spectral measurements of IR atmospheric emissions in the wavelength region from 1.6 to 23 μm. These measurements were achieved using cryogenic spectrometers on six recent rocket flights conducted under the Air Force Cambridge/DNA ICECAP program for coordinated auroral measurements from Poker Flat, Alaska.

Major intercomparisons of balloon-borne stratospheric sensors took place in fall 1982 and spring 1983. In each campaign, 4 gondolas were launched close together from Palestine, Texas. Profiles of many constituents were determined by a variety of instruments, both radiometric and spectrometric, some observing the sun and some sensing atmospheric emission. Column amounts of some constituents were determined by supporting spectroscopic measurements from the ground and from aircraft.

Measurements of atmospheric emission in the interval 1000 cm−1 to 100 cm−1 (10 μ to 100 μ) have been made to a height of 38 km in connection with the infrared astronomy programme at University College London. The instrument used was a Michelson interferometer, flown at night on a balloon from Palestine, Texas during August 1969. Details of the instrument and the methods of data reduction and calibration are given elsewhere [1].

The presence of large amounts of O2 excited to the α1Δg state was first shown by Vallance Jones and Harrison (1958) who detected the 0-1 band of the IR atmospheric system in the evening twilight. However, since that time the IR atmospheric emissions have been extensively studied using ground based, airborne, and rocket techniques, and have provided significant new information relating to the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere. In the present paper these measurements and the mechanisms responsible for the formation of O2(1Δ) in the atmosphere are considered.

The previous speakers have discussed the general aspects of atmospheric IR measurements. In this discussion I will emphasize atmospheric IR measurements made using a balloon platform. Currently available balloons will carry 500 kg instrumentation packages to 40 km almost routinely. This weight capability is of considerable advantage for IR measurements, and the balloon is a very good vehicle for making measurements up to these altitudes.

The photochemistry of the O/O2/O3 system has been described by Wayne (this volume, p. 240) and so will not be discussed further here. Measurements of the atmospheric dayglow (Noxon, 1968) have shown that the (0, 0) bands of the ‘infrared atmospheric’ system at λ = 1.27μm are the strongest of all atmospheric emissions although they cannot be seen from the ground because of reabsorption in the lower atmosphere. O2(1Δg) is thus the metastable species present in the largest concentration in the upper atmosphere. The photolysis of ozone by ultraviolet rediation is the only atmospheric production mechanism which could produce sufficient quantities of O2(1Δg) to explain the dayglow measurements. It is thus important from the atmospheric, as well as the fundamental photochemical, point of view to know the primary products of ozone photolysis in the ultraviolet spectral region.