An uncertainty quantification of PM2.5 emissions from residential wood combustion in Italy

Özet

Residential wood combustion from fireplaces and wood stoves represents a major source of aerosol emissionswhich can cause severe air quality deterioration, pose a serious threat to human health and climate change.Moreover, the emission estimates from this source have a high degree of uncertainty that in many emissioninventories has not yet been assessed. This paper represents a first attempt to quantify the PM2.5 emissionuncertainty from residential wood combustion in Italy. A bootstrap simulation analysis has been performedconsidering the data from the two most updated national surveys on wood consumption. The bootstrap simulationshave been carried out both on a national and on a regional level varying wood consumption and emissionfactors of the different appliance type considered, but keeping constant their distribution in the whole nationalterritory. The influence of the two resulting emission datasets on PM2.5 concentrations in Italy has been investigatedwith the MINNI model. The results show that the mean of PM2.5 total emissions for Italy is circa 120kt, from a minimum of 97 kt to a maximum of 146 kt (−18.9%, +21.5% on the mean value). Moreover, asignificant variation of annual average PM2.5 concentrations, with values higher than 10 μg/m3 in the mostpolluted areas, is shown by model results. The distribution influence of the different appliance types has beenexplored with a sensitivity test in the Veneto Region. This test reveals the importance of emission factors andtechnology share as the most important parameters influencing the uncertainty analysis.