A new method to estimate air-quality levels using a synoptic-regression approach. Part I: Present-day O3 and PM10 analysis

In order to make projections for future air-quality levels, a robust methodology is needed that succeeds in reconstructing present-day air-quality levels. At present, climate projections for meteorological variables are available from Atmospheric-Ocean Coupled Global Climate Models (AOGCMs) but the temporal and spatial resolution is insufficient for air-quality assessment. Therefore, a variety of methods are tested in this paper in their ability to hindcast maximum 8 hourly levels of O-3 and daily mean PM10 from observed meteorological data. The methods are based on a multiple linear regression technique combined with the automated Lamb weather classification. Moreover, we studied whether the above-mentioned multiple regression analysis still holds when driven by operational ECMWF (European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast) meteorological data. The main results show that a weather type classification prior to the regression analysis is superior to a simple linear regression approach. In contrast to PM10 downscaling, seasonal characteristics should be taken into account during the downscaling of O-3 time series. Apart from a lower explained variance due to intrinsic limitations of the regression approach itself, a lower variability of the meteorological predictors (resolution effect) and model deficiencies, this synoptic-regression-based tool is generally able to reproduce the relevant statistical properties of the observed O-3 distributions important in terms of European air quality Directives and air quality mitigation strategies. For PM10, the situation is different as the approach using only meteorology data was found to be insufficient to explain the observed PM10 variability using the meteorological variables considered in this study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.