Confpaper

Influence of ammonia emissions on aerosol formation in northern and central Europe

Abstract

High concentrations of particles pose a threat to human health and the environment. In this study the influence of ammonia (NH3) emissions on aerosol concentration in central Europe is investigated. Depending on crop growth, temperature and local legislation individual temporal profiles for fertilizer and manure application are calculated for each model grid cell of the SMOKE-EU emission model. The emission data was used as input for the CMAQ chemical transport model. Comparisons to EMEP observations indicate that the new ammonia emission module leads to a better agreement of modeled and observed concentrations. The model was used then to assess the influence of emission changes. It was found that a reduction of ammonia emissions by 50 % lead to a 24 % reduction of total PM2.5 concentrations in the model domain during winter, mainly driven by reduced formation of ammonium nitrate.
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