Evaluation of impact of residential heating on air quality of megacity Istanbul by CMAQ

Metin Baykara, Ulas Im, Alper Unal*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Residential heating is one of the major sectors that contribute to emissions of harmful air pollutants in urban areas. In Istanbul, local sources are the main contributors of particulate matter levels. To quantify the contributions of residential heating sector to ambient particulate matter concentrations, we have developed an up to date spatially distributed high-resolution emissions inventory based on local activity data. The air quality simulations were conducted using the CMAQ (version 5.2). Our study results showed that our high-resolution emissions of the residential heating sector significantly improve the spatial distribution and concentration of air pollutants (SO2, PM10, PM2.5) for Istanbul. Air quality model simulations with our high-resolution emissions underestimated PM10 concentrations throughout the study episode on average by only 4.16% with a mean bias of 2.23 μg/m−3 while base inventory underestimated PM10 concentrations on average by 35.1% with a mean bias of 18.91 μg/m−3. Results show that our spatially distributed high-resolution emissions inventory produces more realistic results for Istanbul during wintertime when residential heating has the most influence on local air pollution.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1688-1697
Number of pages10
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume651
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Feb 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK, KAMAG project no: 111G037 ).

FundersFunder number
TUBITAK
Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştirma Kurumu111G037

    Keywords

    • Air quality
    • CMAQ
    • Istanbul
    • Particulate matter
    • Residential heating

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