Climate & Air Quality projections over Europe for 2030 and 2050

Kurzfassung

Over Europe, air quality has improved in recent years and is expected to continue improving due to further emission reductions. However, climate change also affects air quality, for instance through changes in wash-out processes or increases in biogenic VOC emissions. The magnitude and direction of these climate-induced air quality changes remain uncertain. To investigate how air quality evolves under different emission projections for species relevant to both climate and air quality, we perform consistent chemistry-climate simulations for Europe for the years 2030 and 2050.

For these simulations, we use the global-regional chemistry-climate model MECO(n). MECO(n) consists of the global chemistry-climate model EMAC and the regional atmospheric chemistry model COSMO-CLM/MESSy. The EMAC simulations are performed with a global horizontal resolution of around 120 km. Over Europe, we include up to three nested domains: a 22 km domain covering the entire continent, a 7 km domain for Central Europe, and a 2 km domain over Germany. For present-day and future projections, we use historical simulations and SSP projections (SSP1-2.6 and SSP2-4.5) downscaled consistently over Europe.

We present a preliminary analysis of the simulated air quality changes, with a particular focus on the role of transport sector emissions. To quantify the effects of these emissions, we apply a source apportionment method at both global and regional scales