Assessing ozone abatement scenarios in the framework of the Spanish ozone mitigation plan

Hervé Petetin; Marc Guevara; Roger Garatachea; Franco López; Kevin Oliveira; Santiago Enciso; Oriol Jorba; Xavier Querol; Jordi Massagué; Andrés Alastuey; Carlos Pérez García-Pando

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165380

Assessing ozone abatement scenarios in the framework of the Spanish ozone mitigation plan

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Dec 1:902:165380. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165380. Epub 2023 Jul 8.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: herve.petetin@bsc.es.
² Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: marc.guevara@bsc.es.
³ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: roger.garatachea@bsc.es.
⁴ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: franco.lopez@bsc.es.
⁵ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: kevin.deoliveira@bsc.es.
⁶ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: santiago.enciso@bsc.es.
⁷ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Electronic address: oriol.jorba@bsc.es.
⁸ Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona 08034, Spain. Electronic address: xavier.querol@idaea.csic.es.
⁹ Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona 08034, Spain; Department of Mining, Industrial and ICT Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, UPC, Manresa 08242, Spain. Electronic address: jordi.massague@idaea.csic.es.
¹⁰ Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona 08034, Spain. Electronic address: andres.alastuey@idaea.csic.es.
¹¹ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC); ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, Passeig Lluís Companys, 23, Barcelona 08010, Spain. Electronic address: carlos.perez@bsc.es.

PMID: 37429468
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165380

Abstract

Tropospheric ozone (O₃) is a secondary air pollutant that affects human health, vegetation and climate, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Spain. In order to tackle this long-standing issue, the Spanish government recently started to design the Spanish O₃ Mitigation Plan. To support this initiative and ultimately provide recommendations, we performed a first ambitious emission and air quality modeling exercise. This study presents the development of different emission scenarios - aligned with or beyond the measures planned for 2030 in Spain - and the modeling of their respective impact on the O₃ pollution across Spain (in July 2019) with both MONARCH and WRF-CMAQ air quality models. The modeling experiments include a base case scenario, a so-called planned emission (PE) scenario integrating the expected emission changes related to 2030, and a set of specific emission scenarios in which additional emission changes are applied to specific sectors (on e.g., road transport, maritime traffic) on top of the PE scenario. The planned emission scenario considerably reduces daily 8-h maximum O₃ concentrations (-4 μg/m³ on average), with strongest reductions in Madrid region, north of Catalonia, Valencia region, Galicia and Andalusia. The frequency of observed daily exceedances of the 120 μg/m³ daily 8-h maximum target value and 180 μg/m³ hourly information threshold could be reduced by -37 and -77 %, respectively. The results of the specific scenarios highlight road transport and maritime traffic as two key emission sectors contributing to O₃ pollution, over the entire country and the Mediterranean coast, respectively, while solvent use and industry emissions have a more limited and localized impact on O₃. In any case, even with the implementation of all the emission scenarios, daily exceedances of the aforementioned thresholds will still be recorded over the country.

Keywords: Emission scenario; Mitigation plan; Ozone; Road transport emissions; Shipping emissions; Spain.