Abstract
Heat-periods in summer occurred more frequently in this decade and affected the well-being of citizens in several ways. One effect of heat-periods is a higher photochemical ozone (O3) production rate, which leads to higher O3 concentrations. Strategies to influence urban climate and air pollution more often include urban trees. A side effect of urban trees is the emission of biogenic VOCs (BVOCs), which are participating in urban O3 production. In this study, we investigate the effect of urban tree BVOCs during heat-period conditions on O3 formation using an integrated urban-scale biogenic emissions and chemistry transport model chain. To demonstrate the possibility of investigating the effect of urban trees on O3 production under heat-period conditions, we performed simulations in the densely populated Rhein-Ruhr area (DE) in July 2018. The results show impacts of up to 4% higher averaged maximum daily 8 h mean (MDA8) O3 concentrations due to local isoprene emissions and up to additional 15% higher MDA8 O3 values when decreasing NOx emissions from traffic and increasing urban tree emissions. In general, the relevance of biogenic emissions is expected to increase in future due to higher frequency of heat-period events related to climate change and due to the decreasing trend of anthropogenic emissions in response to current legislation. Therefore, the established model chain can be a valuable tool for urban planning.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the CLINSH project, under the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. We thank Dieter Busch at the LANUV for providing emission data and the LUQS for providing AQ monitoring data.
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Questioner: Silvia Trini Castelli
Question: You showed that green infrastructures have a number of benefits, then illustrated the “drawbacks” in ozone increase. To avoid pressing the message that trees and vegetation bring negative contributions to the environment, would you be able to provide a list of “final budget” that account for all aspects, pros and cons?
Answer: In many recent reviews (Eisenman et al., 2019; Fitzky et al., 2019) the need for more modeling studies to answer the question on possible drawbacks in terms of ozone formation, while planning urban green infrastructure to mitigate other impacts is emphasized. Thus, the presented study was designed to show a framework that can be used to help answering the question of a “final budget” of pros and cons of urban green infrastructure.
Questioner: Heinke Schlünzen
Question: Can you rec urban areas that should be best used to improve urban climate and have little impact on ozone formation?
Answer: This kind of question shall be answered with the introduced modeling chain and is highly dependent on existing local tree species and meteorological conditions. Nevertheless, our first results show higher ozone concentrations due to isoprene especially in areas close to high sources of NOx emissions. But more analysis and research is needed to finally answer this question.
Questioner: Calvin Arter
Question: Have you considered impacts of BVOC emissions in urban areas on SOA formation.
Answer: We are working on the integration of the interaction of BOVC emissions and SOA formation in the EPISODE-CityChem model, but in the presented results we did not account for this effect.
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Ramacher, M.O.P., Karl, M., Bieser, J., Feldner, J. (2021). The Impact of BVOC Emissions from Urban Trees on O3 Production in Urban Areas Under Heat-Period Conditions. In: Mensink, C., Matthias, V. (eds) Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XXVII. ITM 2019. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-63760-9_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-63760-9_34
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