Monitoring & Assessment: Air Publications

LIFE Emerald - Assessment of Spatial Representativeness of the Irish Monitoring Network

Summary:

Assessment of Spatial Representativeness of the Irish Monitoring Network

The Deliverable details the spatial assessment study of the Irish air quality monitoring network using the Emerald modelling system. The assessment was carried out in line with the European Commission - DG Environment FAIRMODE guidelines on spatial representativeness in the context of air quality.

Ireland is officially split into four Air Quality Zones (AQZs): Dublin, Cork, other cities and rural Ireland. The spatial representativeness of the monitoring zones in each AQZ was assessed. A fifth zone covering the whole of Ireland was also considered.

The Spatial Representativeness Area (SRA) of each station in the monitoring network was calculated using station metadata, namely:

• Station location (latitude and longitude)
• Station type (traffic, industrial or background)
• Station area (rural, suburban or urban)
• Pollutants measured.

The Emerald high-resolution air quality maps for NO₂, PM_2.5, PM₁₀ and O₃ for the years 2021 and 2022 were used. A number of combinations of station, pollutant, year, and SRA-definition were examined, which lead to the generation of hundreds of SRA-plots. The coverage of the AQZs by the SRAs of stations inside the AQZ was examined. Coverage maps were obtained by overlaying the SRAs of all stations measuring a pollutant in an AQZ.

The main conclusions and observations of the assessment are as follows:

• The whole Irish territory is well covered by air quality stations for all pollutants.
• Compared to other EU air quality monitoring networks, Ireland has a dense monitoring network resulting in high coverage of the AQZs for each pollutant.
• The exception are the rural surroundings of Dublin and Cork. These parts are not covered for NO₂ but would be covered by rural, suburban, and urban stations outside of the respective AQZs.
• The FAIRMODE requirement that an SRA lies within an AQZ might need to be dropped and be replaced by a distance criterion for rural stations. This is still under discussion in FAIRMODE.