Transboundary Air Pollution: Asia Region

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Transboundary 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

• by
• Wanna Chueinta

Office of Atoms for Peace
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Outline

• 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

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Transbounadary 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

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TAP (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

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TAP (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

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TAP 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

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Collaboration 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

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Collaboration 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

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Collaboration 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

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Collaboration 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

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Collaboration 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

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Acid 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.

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Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
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RAIN ASIA Simulation Model
Deposition 1990
Exceedance of critical load 2020
Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
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Estimation of SO2 Emission in 2020 in East Asia
Ohizumi, 2004 (The third country training
program, Thailand)
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Impacts 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

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Acid 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

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Situation 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
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Transboundary 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

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Transboundary 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.

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Conceptual 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
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Situation 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
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Situation 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

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Atmospheric 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

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Atmospheric 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

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Factors 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.

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Factors Affecting TAP

• TAP can impact an entire region depending on
  windflow and weather patterns

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LRTAP 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.

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LRTAP 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

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LRTAP 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

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Potential 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.

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HYSPLIT Back Trajectories
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HYSPLIT Back Trajectories
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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
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Cu 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
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LRTAP

• 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

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Toxic Air Pollutants and Their Common Sources
http//www.naei.org.uk/pollutantdetail
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LRTAP 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

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References

• Pollution Control Department, Ministry of Natural
  Resources and Environment, Thailand
• Background paper by Johan Kuylenstierna,
  Stockholm Environment Institute
• Others as marked in the slides