Working Group on Effects

Heavy Metals

Close collaboration with national scientific experts is considered as highly important activity under EMEP. This year MSC-E took part in a variety of co-operative activities:

• At the request of Spanish colleagues the source code and input data of the MSCE-HM model were delivered to the Group of air quality modelling of CIEMAT (National Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology) as the EMEP contribution to the development of national air quality model for heavy metals.
  
  
• Calculated deposition data of lead, cadmium and mercury for various years were transferred to the experts from Switzerland (FUB-Research Group for Environmental Monitoring), Bulgaria (Institute of Botany BAS), Germany (University of Vechta) and Austria (University of Vienna) involved in the heavy metal measurements in mosses. These data were used for detailed analysis of heavy metal deposition based both on modelling results and measured concentrations in mosses. The results of the analysis are planned to be published in a peer-reviewed journals.
  
  
• In order to support national-scale modelling of mercury atmospheric transport over Italy the experts from CESI RICERCA SpA were provided with data on three-dimensional concentrations of mercury for setting up initial and boundary conditions. Besides, general aspects of the parameterization of mercury natural emission and re-emission were discussed with the experts and the required input information was provided for generation of spatially distributed natural emission dataset.
  
  
• Representatives of MSC-E took part in 9th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, held in Guiyang, China in June, 2009. The conference considers a wide variety of aspects concerning mercury pollution worldwide. They include anthropogenic sources and emissions, environmental monitoring and modelling, analytical chemistry, health effects, socioeconomic aspects etc. The conference demonstrated increasing interest of the scientific community to mercury pollution problems. MSC-E presented new EMEP results obtained in the field of mercury modelling. In particular, the newly developed multi-media approach for mercury modelling was demonstrated along with first simulation results of mercury cycling in the environment.
  
  
• Taking into account that increasing cooperation with EECCA countries is one of the main EMEP priorities, MSC-E prepared country oriented reports including source-receptor calculations for all 12 EECCA countries in Russian language. The country reports are available on MSC-E website.

Persistent Organic Pollutants

In 2009, the work on measurement-modelling assessment of POP levels in the environment, including the elaboration of the methodology of usage of passive sampling in line with modelling and development of a tool for evaluating POP pollution levels on the hemispheric/global scale, was performed in co-operation with experts from countries.

Usage of passive sampling for improving spatial coverage of the EMEP region and entire globe is one of promising directions of monitoring activities. A lot of national experts and institutions are involved in this activity. The peculiarities of involving passive sampling data for the description of POP contamination levels as well as a methodology of using of these data for monitoring-modelling evaluation of POP contamination were presented by MSC-E at the Workshop “Future of the air global monitoring” (St Petersburg, Russia, March 2009) organized by the Research Centre for Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology (RECETOX), Masaryk University. National experts from Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Russian Federation, Spain, the United Kingdom, and representatives from the Stockholm Convention, AMAP and EMEP took part in the discussion on this issue.

This year the systematic work on the comparison of passive sampling data with model simulations was initiated. The results of MONET-CEEC (the Czech Republic) and EMEP passive sampling campaigns were used for this purpose. The comparison of the data of these two campaigns with calculations for 2006 was performed in collaboration with Ivan Holoubek and Jana Klanova (the Czech Republic). The results of global passive campaign GAPS (Canada) were put at MSC-E disposal by Tom Harner, Canada. Canadian data are planned to be compared with results of hemispheric/global calculations next year.

One of the important directions of MSC-E work is model development. In particular, it includes preparation of input data on atmospheric reactants affecting POP atmospheric transport both at European and global scales. In the framework of this direction the one-year data on the atmospheric aerosol and OH radical with global coverage generated by GEMAQ-EC model was put at MSC-E disposal by Environment Canada (K. Puckett and S. Gong). Pilot calculations using these data are planned to be carried out by MSC-E in the next year.