Urban Air Pollution and Interaction with Climate (U-APIC)

Background

Urban environment plays a unique and critical role in the Earth system. Air pollution and atmospheric chemistry can interact with urban meteorology and emissions in a complex way, which has not been fully understood. Urban is also the most populated region where air pollution can exert significant adverse impacts on human health. Moreover, different urban regions may have their own characteristics for air pollution and interaction with climate, which requires international collaboration and coordination. Thus, this proposed U-APIC activity aims to address this imperative topic.

Currently, there are no IGAC activities specifically dedicated to urban air quality and interactions with unique urban climate/weather environments. Existing IGAC activities may cover certain aspects of urban air pollution, which however are lack of primary foci on interaction with urban climate and extremes and associated impact on public health. This brings opportunities for cross-activity collaborations between existing IGAC activities and the U-APIC activity.

Overarching goals

Our goals are to leverage both observational and modeling capabilities to improve the understanding and quantification of urban air pollution affected by urban emissions and climate/weather and associated feedback to urban climate/weather as well as the impacts on public health, and to provide useful scientific basis and guidance to enhance policy making and benefit the public. This U-APIC activity is unique on several aspects: (1) filling in knowledge gaps of cross-scale complex chemistry-climate interactions in unique urban environments under climate change; (2) connecting urban air pollution and climate/weather extremes to public health; (3) advocating the engagement with the society (e.g., local community and stakeholders) to promote actionable sciences.

Science questions

1. What are the urban emissions (particularly biogenic emissions) and associated impacts on air pollution under climate change, urbanization, urban climate adaptation, decreasing anthropogenic sources, and extreme events?
2. How are atmospheric chemistry processes affected by urban emissions and meteorology compared to rural and remote areas, and what is their feedback to urban climate/weather?
3. How does urban air pollution interact with surrounding rural environments and long-range transported (inter-regional and inter-continental) pollution?
4. How do urban air pollution-meteorology interactions change across spatial scales, ranging from micro-scale chemistry-turbulence interaction to global chemistry-climate interplay?
5. What are the effects of urban air pollution and climate extremes on public health?
6. What are the effective pathways and actionable solutions to mitigate adverse impacts from urban air pollution and climate extremes, particularly through engaging with local community and stakeholders, capacity building, and educational outreach?

Co-chairs

• Cenlin He (NSF NCAR, USA)
• Maria de Fatima Andrade (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Steering committee

• Guy Brasseur (Max-Planck Institution, Germany; NSF NCAR, USA)
• Akinori Takami (National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan)
• Alberto Martilli (CIEMAT, Spain)
• Laura E. Dawidowski (National San Martín University, Argentina)
• Liya E. Yu (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• May Fu (Southern University of Science and Technology, China)
• Rebecca Garland (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
• Tao Wang (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
• Thomas Clasen (Emory University, USA)

We are currently actively expanding our U-APIC community. If you are interested in contributing to and join U-APIC, please email us at u-apic@igacproject.org