GAW Report No. 205 - IGAC Project

7.1 MEGAPOLICHAPTER 7 – OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH ACTIVITIESMEGAPOLI (Megacities: Emissions, urban, regional and Global Atmospheric POLlution andclimate effects, and Integrated tools for assessment and mitigation), funded by the European Unionthrough Framework Programme 7, brings together leading European research groups,state-of-the-art scientific tools and key players from other countries to investigate the interactionsamong megacities, air quality and climate. The project was coordinated by Alexander Baklanov(DMI, Denmark), with co-coordinators Spyros Pandis (FORTH, Greece) and Mark Lawrence (MPIC,Germany). A total of 23 groups from 11 countries in Europe were funded by the project. In addition,the MEGAPOLI framework has led to support from individual institutions and/or national fundingagencies for further scientific contributions to the project, such as a field campaign in Paris.The MEGAPOLI project bridges the spatial and temporal scales that connect local emissions, airquality and weather with global atmospheric chemistry and climate. The main objectives were:1. To assess impacts of megacities and large air-pollution hot-spots on local, regional andglobal air quality,2. To quantify feedbacks among megacity air quality, local and regional climate, and globalclimate change,3. To develop improved integrated tools for prediction of air pollution in megacities.In order to achieve these objectives, the partners of the project have undertaken various activities:• Develop and evaluate integrated methods to improve megacity emission data• Investigate physical and chemical processes starting from the megacity street level,continuing to the city, regional and global scales• Assess regional and global air quality impacts of megacity plumes• Determine the main mechanisms of regional meteorology/climate forcing due to megacityplumes• Assess global megacity pollutant forcing on climate• Examine feedback mechanisms including effects of climate change on megacity air quality• Develop integrated tools for prediction of megacity air quality• Evaluate these integrated tools and use them in case studies• Develop a methodology to estimate the impacts of different scenarios of megacitydevelopment on human health and climate change• Propose and assess mitigation options to reduce the impacts of megacity emissionsThese tasks were organized into nine WorkPackages, which are depicted in Figure 2, alongwith their interrelationships. Within MEGAPOLI, a pyramid strategy (see Figure 3) followed byundertaking detailed measurements in one European megacity, Paris, performing detailed analysisfor a subset of MPCs selected from 12 potential candidates with existing air quality datasets, andinvestigating the effects of all megacities on global atmospheric chemistry and climate. The resultswere disseminated to authorities, the policy community, researchers and the other stakeholders inthe corresponding megacities.The funding for MEGAPOLI ended in September 2011; the analysis of the project results,including model simulations and the Paris field campaign data, is on-going and being published in afinal report for the project, and in various journal papers, including two special issues inAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics, one for the "Megapoli-Paris 2009/2010 campaign"[http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/special_issue248.html], and another titled “Megacities: air qualityand climate impacts from local to globalscales"[http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/special_issue229.html], growing out of studies presentedin the annual megacity sessions of the EGU general assembly (including results from MEGAPOLI,CITYZEN and MILAGRO, among others discussed below).251