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European VOC Emission Estimates Evaluated by Measurements and Model Calculations

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Abstract

Observations and model calculations of the concentration of hydrocarbonsat five Scandinavian rural sites during March–June 1993are reported.Decreasing concentrations from March to June are observedat all sites. The highest concentrations of hydrocarbons were found in air massescoming in from the southwest to southeast, indicating that long rangetransport fromcontinental Europe and the U.K. is important in pollution episodes. An episode of elevated concentrations of hydrocarbons observed at three of the sites in the middle of Marchis described and discussed in relation to the synoptic situation and thepresenceof other chemical compounds (NO2, PAN, total nitrate andozone).A Lagrangian numerical model is used to calculate the concentrations of theindividual hydrocarbons at the fivesites and comparison with observations is made.The calculated concentrations for nonmethane hydrocarbons with quite longchemicallifetimes agree well with the observations.For the sum of observed and calculated hydrocarbons the correlationcoefficientsare in the range of 0.65–0.88 for the five sitesand the ratio between calculated and measured concentrations was0.72–0.97, indicating thatthe European VOC emission inventory is quite well estimated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, N-5007, Bergen, Norway

    øystein Hov & Asgeir Sorteberg

  2. NILU, PO Box 100, N-2007, Kjeller, Norway

    øystein Hov, Norbert Schmidbauer, Sverre Solberg & Frode Stordal

  3. DNMI, PO Box 43, N-0113, Oslo, Norway

    David Simpson

  4. IVL, Box 47086, S-40258, Gøteborg, Sweden

    Anne Lindskog

  5. ITM1, University of Stockholm, S-10691, Stockholm, Sweden

    Hans Areskoug & Pedro Oyola

  6. FMI, Sahaajankatu 22E, SF-00810, Helsinki, Finland

    Heikki Lättilä

  7. DMU, FOLU, Frederiksborgvej 399, DK-4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Niels Z. Heidam

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  1. øystein Hov
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  2. Asgeir Sorteberg
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  9. Pedro Oyola
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  10. Heikki Lättilä
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Hov, ø., Sorteberg, A., Schmidbauer, N. et al. European VOC Emission Estimates Evaluated by Measurements and Model Calculations. Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry 28, 173–193 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005859027649

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