The Nordic Working Group for Climate and Air (NKL) under Nordic Council of Ministers has initiated this project with a specific tender, and Aarhus University, Department of Environmental Science (ENVS) has conducted the research project.
The purpose of the project is to gain a better understanding of the implications of the new WHO guidelines in a Nordic setting. The project also looked at how far Nordic countries currently are from complying with the new 2021-guidelines and provide a foundation for the assessment of measures in the Nordic countries to achieve the new recommended WHO levels. This understanding will also serve to provide a Nordic perspective on the proposed new EU Air Quality Directive from October 2022 - both regarding realistic future limit values and to the regulatory approach.
The project focuses on three main tasks:
Evaluation of air quality monitoring in Nordic countries.
Projection of air quality for 2030 for Nordic countries and selected cities based on air quality modelling.
Sector specific contribution to air quality 2030 for Nordic countries and selected cities based on air quality modelling and modelling of health effects and related external costs.
Chapter 1 is the summary.
Chapter 2 outlines the overall methodology, models and assumptions applied, and criteria for evaluation of air quality monitoring.
In chapter 3, the selection of three cities in each of the Nordic countries is described with the aim to cover the largest cities, but also to have a good geographical coverage for each country.
In chapter 4, a comparison between measurement data and the former and new WHO air quality guidelines is carried out for rural, urban background and street stations in the selected cities in 2021. Further, the proposed new European air quality directive is described and the overall implications for the Nordic countries are outlined. National experts within air quality monitoring have been sub-contracted from Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Sweden (Matthew Ross-Jones), NILU, Norway (Claudia Haka), FMI, Finland (Katriina Kyllönen), Environmental Agency of Iceland, Iceland (Þorsteinn Jóhannsson) for the evaluation of air quality monitoring.
Chapter 5 describes the application of the regional scale air quality model used to predict the background air quality in 2019 and 2030. Results are compared with the new WHO guidelines.
In chapter 6, the application of the local scale air quality model is used to predict urban background air quality in the selected cities in 2019 and 2030. Results are compared with the new WHO guidelines.
Chapter 7 describes the estimation of the emission sector specific contribution to the air quality in 2030 as shares of transboundary-, country-, and city pollution for the selected cities. This is based on regional and local scale modelling.
In chapter 8, the sector contribution of health effects and external costs in 2019 and 2030 is described with focus on the five capital cities in the Nordic countries.