Assessing the intra-urban variability of nitrogen oxides and ozone across a highly heterogeneous urban area.

Autor: El-Khoury C; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.; The Issam Fares Institute, The Climate Change and Environment Program, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon., Alameddine I; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon. ia04@aub.edu.lb., Zalzal J; Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada., El-Fadel M; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.; Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates., Hatzopoulou M; Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Environmental monitoring and assessment [Environ Monit Assess] 2021 Sep 17; Vol. 193 (10), pp. 657. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Sep 17.
DOI: 10.1007/s10661-021-09414-2
Abstrakt: High-resolution air quality maps are critical towards assessing and understanding exposures to elevated air pollution in dense urban areas. However, these surfaces are rarely available in low- and middle-income countries that suffer from some of the highest air pollution levels worldwide. In this study, we make use of land use regressions (LURs) to generate annual and seasonal, high-resolution nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), nitrogen oxides (NO x ), and ozone (O 3 ) exposure surfaces for the Greater Beirut Area (GBA) in Lebanon. NO 2 , NO x and O 3 concentrations were monitored using passive samplers that were deployed at 55 pre-defined monitoring locations. The average annual concentrations of NO 2 , NO x , and O 3 across the GBA were 36.0, 89.7, and 26.9 ppb, respectively. Overall, the performance of the generated models was appropriate, with low biases, high model robustness, and acceptable R 2 values that ranged between 0.66 and 0.73 for NO 2 , 0.56 and 0.60 for NO x , and 0.54 and 0.65 for O 3 . Traffic-related emissions as well as the operation of a fossil-fuel power plant were found to be the main contributors to the measured NO 2 and NO x levels in the GBA, whereas they acted as sinks for O 3 concentrations. No seasonally significant differences were found for the NO 2 and NO x pollution surfaces; as their seasonal and annual models were largely similar (Pearson's r > 0.85 for both pollutants). On the other hand, seasonal O 3 pollution surfaces were significantly different. The model results showed that around 99% of the population of the GBA were exposed to NO 2 levels that exceeded the World Health Organization defined annual standard.
(© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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