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Air quality plan for ozone: an urgent need for North Portugal

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Abstract

Each summer period, ozone concentrations surpass the legislation limits in the north of Portugal, more precisely at the Douro Norte monitoring station. To solve/mitigate this air pollution problem, and respond to the EU requirements, air quality plans were studied and designed. An air quality numerical modelling system was applied, with a source apportionment technique (to the most relevant ozone episodes) to identify the major source regions and the main activity sectors responsible for the ozone values at this site. Modelling results pointed out that the background values contribute with more than 50 % to the ozone concentration measured, followed by transport and residential sectors—the main anthropogenic activities. More regional and transboundary strategies are needed to reduce the background concentrations, besides local actions on road transport and residential combustion at urban regions (e.g., the Porto area).

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Commission for Coordination and Development of North Region (CCDR-N) and also Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for the PhD grants of A. Fernandes (SFRH/BD/86307/2012) and the post-doctoral grants of A. Monteiro (SFRH/BPD/63796/2009), J. Ferreira (SFRH/BPD/40620/2007) and H. Martins (SFRH/BPD/6874/2009). The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of FEDER through the COMPETE Programme and the national funds from FCT—Science and Technology Portuguese Foundation—within project PEst-C/MAR/LA0017/2013 for the MAPLIA Project (PTDC/AAG-MAA/4077/2012)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CESAM, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    C. Borrego, A. Monteiro, H. Martins, J. Ferreira, A. P. Fernandes, S. Rafael & A. I. Miranda

  2. Earth Science Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Jordi Girona 29, Edificio Nexus II, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    M. Guevara & J. M. Baldasano

  3. Environmental Modelling Laboratory, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

    J. M. Baldasano

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  1. C. Borrego
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  2. A. Monteiro
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  3. H. Martins
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  4. J. Ferreira
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  5. A. P. Fernandes
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  7. A. I. Miranda
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  8. M. Guevara
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  9. J. M. Baldasano
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Correspondence to A. Monteiro.

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Borrego, C., Monteiro, A., Martins, H. et al. Air quality plan for ozone: an urgent need for North Portugal. Air Qual Atmos Health 9, 447–460 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-015-0352-5

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