Assessing air quality in cities under climate change scenarios: a source apportionment approach ; Valiação da qualidade do ar nas cidades em cenários de alteração climática: análise da contribuição de fontes

Climate change and air pollution are the current and future challenges of urban areas. Integrated approaches tackling air pollution and climate change can play an important role to support urban planning oriented for citizen welfare. In this context, the main goal of this work was to develop a modelling approach able to assess the impacts of future climate and projected emissions, including the relative contribution of different source regions and sectors, on air quality at urban scale. The Aveiro Region, in central Portugal, was selected as a case study since it is recognized as one of the regions affected by some poor air quality events in Portugal and vulnerable to climate change effects. Air quality modelling, associated with climate change scenarios, is a powerful tool to understand and assess the physical and chemical processes occurring in the atmosphere. In this scope, the WRF-CAMx modelling framework was applied to an urban domain over the Aveiro Region, for the medium-term future climate (considering the SSP2 4.5 scenario) and for the recent-past (considered as reference). For the air quality modelling, source apportionment tools were applied, based on literature review findings, allowing to quantify the relative contribution of several source activities and areas to ambient pollution. Based on the source apportionment results, for the medium-term future, two emission abatement scenarios were defined and tested for the industrial sector identified as the most relevant in the region. Additionally, for the climate scenarios and projected emissions (with and without additional emission reductions), mortality health indicators, expressed as the number of premature deaths, were used to estimate health impacts of long-term exposures. Results show that in the medium-term future, air quality in the Aveiro Region may improve, with reduction up to 4 μg.m⁻³ for PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations and 22 μg.m⁻³ for NO₂, due to the implementation of carbon neutrality measures, defined to fight climate change. Also, the ...