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The objective of this study was to evaluate three meteorological models (MM5, WRF and TRAMPER) by comparing the calculated meteorological parameters with observations over the Po Valley area (Italy) for 2005. The analysis shows that MM5 and WRF perform with similar quality, with advantages of WRF at following high resolution time patterns and better scores of MM5 at reproducing annual averages, noticed for precipitation and relative humidity calculations. Results from the TRAMPER model also reflect very well surface meteorological measurements, they may be however driven by data assimilation applied in this modelling system and thus strongly influenced by very local effects. This feature of TRAMPER may lead as well to large uncertainties in reproducing other parameters important for air quality modelling such as planetary boundary layer (PBL) heights, friction velocity (u*) values or stability conditions.

NO2 concentrations at the street level are a major concern for urban air quality in Europe and have been regulated under the EU Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution. Despite the legal requirements, limit values are exceeded at many monitoring stations with little or no improvement in recent years. In order to assess the effects of future emission control regulations on roadside NO2 concentrations, a downscaling module has been implemented in the GAINS integrated assessment model. The module follows a hybrid approach based on atmospheric dispersion calculations and observations from the AirBase European air quality database that are used to estimate site-specific parameters. Pollutant concentrations at every monitoring site with sufficient data coverage are disaggregated into contributions from regional background, urban increment, and local roadside increment. The future evolution of each contribution is assessed with a model of the appropriate scale: 28 × 28 km grid based on the EMEP Model for the regional background, 7 × 7 km urban increment based on the CHIMERE Chemistry Transport Model, and a chemical box model for the roadside increment. Thus, different emission scenarios and control options for long-range transport as well as regional and local emissions can be analysed. Observed concentrations and historical trends are well captured, in particular the differing NO2 and total NOx = NO + NO2 trends. Altogether, more than 1950 air quality monitoring stations in the EU are covered by the model, including more than 400 traffic stations and 70% of the critical stations. Together with its well-established bottom-up emission and dispersion calculation scheme, GAINS is thus able to bridge the scales from European-wide policies to impacts in street canyons. As an application of the model, we assess the evolution of attainment of NO2 limit values under current legislation until 2030. Strong improvements are expected with the introduction of the Euro 6 emission standard for light duty vehicles; however, for some major European cities, further measures may be required, in particular if aiming to achieve compliance at an earlier time.

A collaborative research project for air pollution reduction was set up in 2006 between the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) and the Authorities of the Lombardy Region in Italy. Among other research activities the PO valley Model Intercomparison exercise (POMI) has been carried out in order to explore the changes in air-quality in response to changes in emissions. The starting point was the evaluation of the simulated particulate matter and ozone against observations for the year 2005 of the six participating Chemical Transport Models’ (CTM). As models were run with the same configuration in terms of spatial resolution, boundary condition, emissions and meteorology, the differences presented in the models’ results should only be related to their formulation. As described in the paper much effort has been put to improve the accuracy of emissions and meteorology. Nevertheless none of the models using the proposed meteorology succeeded to fulfill the performance criteria set in the 2008 Air Quality Directive and in the literature for particulate matter, while also for ozone the results are not very satisfying. Possible explanations for this common behavior and a discussion of the differences among models’ results are presented., JRC.H.2-Air and Climate