Ammonia agriculture emissions: From EMEP to a high resolution inventory

Özet

Agriculture is the main source of atmospheric ammonia (NH3). Methodologies are needed to quantifynational NH3 emissions. For European continental scale the EMEP emissions inventory with a50 50 km2 resolution is yearly available. However, current air quality models are often applied withhigher spatial resolution, in order to obtain representative results, especially at urban and regionalscales; therefore, a simple top-down approach based in the spatial interpolation of EMEP emissions is notsufficient.The aim of this work is the development and application of a mixed top-down and bottom-upmethodology for high resolution emissions inventory for the agriculture sector, based on EMEP andother public data sources (E-PRTR inventory, statistical data, etc.) for Western Spain and Portugal.This new emission inventory was compared with EMEP and assessed using the WRF-CAMx air qualitymodelling system. Results highlighted the influence of the meteorology (high temperatures) and themagnitude of emissions on NH3 air quality concentrations. The higher resolution emissions lead to thehighest maximum NH3 ground level concentrations, in specific locations.