Title: Transboundary Air Pollution: Asia Region
1Transboundary Air PollutionAsia Region
IAEA/RCA Executive Meeting on Air Pollution
Related to Transboundary Effects, Visibility,
Climate Change and Agriculture Sydney,
Australia 5-7 April 2005
Office of Atoms for Peace
2Outline
- General information on Transboundary Air
Pollution (TAP) - Collaboration in Asia region related to TAP
- TAP in Asia
- Acid deposition
- Haze pollution
- Brown clouds
- Long-range transport air pollution (LRTAP)
modeling - HYSPLIT back trajectory (examples)
- Additional note on LRTAP and heavy metals
3Transbounadary Air Pollutions (TAP)
- TAP is a particular problem for pollutants that
are not easily destroyed or react in the
atmosphere to form secondary pollutant - Transboundary air pollutants can servive for
period of days to years and can be transported
hundreds or thousands of miles - TAP is at two distinct scales-
- Between nations
- Between municipal areas and their rural hinterland
4TAP (cont.)
- TAP in the form of smoke haze from forest fires
and acid rain from industrial smokestacks spreads
widely across the region, severely affecting
human health and economic activity - Forest fire, coal-fired power plant, smelter and
various factories, biomass burning and
transportation sector can contribute to
transboundary air pollutants
5TAP (cont.)
- Long-range transboundary air pollutants
- SO2, NOx and their secondary particles
- Persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
- Heavy metals (HMs)
- The effects range from simple irritants to
extreme toxicity
6TAP Effects
- TAP affect the air, soils, rivers, lakes and/or
food - TAP causes a number of different problems e.g.,
formation of particles, ground level ozone,
formation of acid rain - TAP is a growing environmental health problem in
South and East Asia - TAP requires international actions and
collaboration to control their formation and
effects
7Collaboration on LRTAP in Asia Region
- Malé Declaration
- The Malé Declaration on control and prevention of
air pollution and its likely transboundary
effects for South Asia (established in 1998) - Participating countries are Bangladesh, Bhutan,
India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka - Main achievements are
- A network of monitoring stations
- A number of parallel studies
8Collaboration in Asia Region (cont.)
- EANET
- Acid deposition monitoring network in East Asia
- 12 participating countries- Cambodia, China,
Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia,
Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russia, Thailand
and Vietnam - Main objective is to promote the mutual
cooperation on the issues related to acid
deposition among the participating countries
9Collaboration in Asia Region (cont.)
- ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
- The objective is to prevent and monitor
transboundary haze pollution resulting from land
and/or forest fires - ASEAN member countries- Brunei Darussalam,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - The agreement obligates member countries to
Co-operate, Respond and Take legal,
administrative and/or other measures to implement
their obligations
10Collaboration in Asia Region (cont.)
- The Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) Project
- ABC initiated by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), initially focus on the
Indo-Asian and Pacific regions - Main aim of the first phase (beginning in 2003)
is - To establish a network of groundbased monitoring
stations throughout the Indo-Asian and Pacific
regions to study the composition and seasonal
patterns of the brown clouds - to study the impact of the atmospheric brown
cloud on a number of parameters, including
monsoon change, water balance, agriculture, and
health
11Collaboration in Asia Region (cont.)
- RAINS-Asia
- An international initiative to develop an
integrated assessment model similar to Europes
RAINS model for use in developing policies on
sulphur and nitrogen emissions in Asia - CAI-Asia
- The clean air initiative for Asian cities
promotes better air quality management in Asian
cities through building partnerships and sharing
experiences
12Acid Deposition Pollution in Asia
- Natural sources
- Volcanic eruption
- Forest fire
- Man-made sources
- Coal power plant
- Other industries
- Automobiles
- Coal stoves for domestic use, etc.
13Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
14RAIN ASIA Simulation Model
Deposition 1990
Exceedance of critical load 2020
Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
15Estimation of SO2 Emission in 2020 in East Asia
Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
16Impacts of Acid Deposition
- Adverse health effect on human life
- Negative effect on ecosystems and environment
- Impacts on aquatic animals and plants
- Fish, shellfish, insect, plant plankton
- Impacts on forests
- Soil, water, various living creatures, and plants
- Impacts on buildings
17Acid Deposition Monitoring
- Wet deposition
- Major measurements
- Sulfate, nitrate and other ions
- HMs, phosphate, aluminum and organic compounds
- Dry deposition
- Major measurements
- Gases, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone
and others - Particulate components
- Soil and Vegetation
- Inland aquatic environment
18Situation of Acid Deposition in Thailand
- Fuel combustion, largely from lignite power
plants, accounts for most of the total SO2
emissions in Thailand. Industry is the next
largest source. - Acid deposition monitoring network in Thailand
has been set since 1996 consisted of 5 monitoring
sites. 5 additional sites have been included
since 2002. - The average pH of rain is found around 5 to 6,
considered together with the monitoring study of
acid deposition, Thailand has not yet the serious
problem of acid rain.
Source Pollution Control Department, Thailand
19Transboundary Haze Pollution in Asia
- Smoke haze caused by land and forest fires seems
to be the common problem in SE Asia that occurs
every now and then - The most severe one was during dry season in 1997
by which Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and
Singapore were badly affected. The Philippines
and Thailand were affected to a lesser degree. - The severity and extent of the smoke haze
pollution affected millions of people across the
region
20Transboundary Haze Pollution Effects
- Environment damage including air, and water
- Ecological impacts were reflected in the
degradation of vegetation and soil quality,
erosion of biodiversity, damage to the health of
forest ecosystems, loss of wildlife habitat and
wildlife decline, - Economic sectors including land transport,
shipping, construction, tourism can be severely
affected - Considerable health impact on the people of the
countries affected.
21Conceptual framework for underlying causes of
fires and haze(http//www.sea-user.org/transbound
ary_air.php)
Recession/ Economic Policy
Land-use Planning and Land Reform
InsecureTenure Use Rights
Forest Conversion for Agriculture
High Impact Logging and Forest Exploitation
Social Conflict
Crop Residues
Waste Wood/ Plant Biomass
Incentives to Burn rather than Use Waste
Fire as Weapon
Choice of Fire as Waste Removal Method
Drought Conditions
Domestic Policies
Atmospheric Inversion
Haze
Climate Variability
Wild Fires
Impacts Forests, Health, Biodiversity,
Atmosphere, Tourism
International Pressure
22Situation of Haze Problem from Open Burning in
Thailand
- In Thailand, open burning of agriculture
residuals is the major of PM causing wildspread
sub-regional haze - Concerning to forest fires
- SE Asia region post-logging burning is an
established practice, and has transboundary
implications for Thailand - Forest fires in the country are mostly in the
northern part
Source Pollution Control Department, Thailand
23Situation of Haze Problem from Open Burning in
Thailand (cont.)
- Transboundary haze pollution affected from
neighbor countries - Southern part of Thailand - from forest fire in
Indonesia that happen annually - Northern part of Thailand - from forest fire in
Myanmar and Laos
24Atmospheric Brown Clouds
- Atmospheric brown clouds refer to widely
distributed haze layers caused by the long-range
transported gases and particulates in air
pollution - Both fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning
as well as automobiles contribute to the
particles in the brown clouds - The brownish color results from absorption and
scattering of visible solar radiation by nitrogen
oxides, organics, black carbon and dust in such
clouds
25Atmospheric Brown Clouds
- The reaction is called Photochemical Reaction
- Resulting brownish-orange air pollution is called
Photochemical Smog, consist of harmful secondary
pollutants (ozone, formaldehyde, PAN, and other
potential toxic chemicals) - Consequently, they are frequently occurring
phenomena in industrial and populated regions. - The problem is becoming particularly severe in
the tropical regions of South and East Asia (also
America and Africa) because of the long dry
season, rapid growth in industrialization, and
widespread emission sources
26Factors Affecting Air Pollution Levels
- Wind and Rain
- E.g., wind sweeps dirty air out of cities rain
washes pollutants from the sky - Mountains and Hills
- They may block the flow of winds and trap
pollutants for days or end - Temperature Inversions
- Temperature Inversions create warm-air lids over
cooler air. Consequently, the cool, dense ground
air cannot mix vertically and, thus, pollutants
become trapped in the air below.
27Factors Affecting TAP
- TAP can impact an entire region depending on
windflow and weather patterns
28LRTAP Modeling
- Models of the long-range transport of
particulates and their precursors have to
simulate atmospheric processes while these
pollutants are transported by winds - Air trajectories have been used to study
atmospheric transport climatology by identifying
pathways of air mass transportation. - Backward trajectories are commonly used to
identify air pollution source regions and
specific sources by back computation starting
from the receptor.
29LRTAP Modeling
- Dispersion models describe the transport of the
particles from a source to the sampling location.
(Source-oriented model) - ATMOS a Lagrangian multi-layer trajectory model
of sulfur transport/deposition - UR-BAT (URban-Branching Atmospheric Trajectory)
also for long-range transport of sulfur
30LRTAP Modeling/Methods Incorporating Back
Trajectories
- Receptor-oriented models for long-range transport
of secondary species as sulfate developed using
back trajectories - Potential Source Contribution Function (PSCF)
- Residential Time Analysis
- Residential Time Weighted Concentrations
- Areas of Influence Analysis (AIA)
- Quantitative Bias Trajectory Analysis
31Potential Source Contribution Function (PSCF)
- In a PSCF analysis, both chemical and
meteorological data for each filter sample are
needed. Air parcel back trajectories ending at a
receptor site are calculated from the
meteorological data with a trajectory model.
32HYSPLIT Back Trajectories
33HYSPLIT Back Trajectories
34 Power plant (1)
Power plant (2)
HOPO
COCO
HOPO Hopi Point, Grand Canyon, AZ
1 Red Gardner PP, NV 2 Mohave
PP, NV 3 Irvington PP, AZ
4 Apache PP, AZ Las Vegas,
NV Phoenix, AZ
COCO Cottonwood Cove, NV Mohave
PP, NV Los Angeles, CA
San Diego, CA
35Cu smelter factor
Sea salt factor
HOPO
TONT
Pacific Ocean
TONT Tonto National Park, NM
Cu Smelter, San Manuel, AZ
HOPO Hopi Point, Grand
Canyon, AZ
36LRTAP
- Long-range transboundary air pollutants
- SO2, NOx and their secondary particles
- Persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
- Heavy metals (HMs)
- The effects range from simple irritants to
extreme toxicity
37Toxic Air Pollutants and Their Common Sources
http//www.naei.org.uk/pollutantdetail
38LRTAP HMs (cont.)
- Research, Development, Monitoring and
Cooperation focusing on the HMs may related to - Emissions of HMs
- Long-range transport and deposition levels and
their modeling - Existing levels in the biotic and abiotic
environment - Pollutant pathways and inventories in
representative ecosystems - Relevant effects on human health and the
environment, including quantification of those
effects
39References
- Pollution Control Department, Ministry of Natural
Resources and Environment, Thailand - Background paper by Johan Kuylenstierna,
Stockholm Environment Institute - Others as marked in the slides