CAMS publish interim European air quality assessment for 2023

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service have published their Interim Annual Assessment Report on European Air Quality over the course of last year.

The report catalogues and analyses European air quality events throughout the year, from the impact of Covid, the war in Ukraine and the use of wood for domestic heating.

It also publishes the levels of Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide, PM10 and PM2.5 

2023 was the second hottest Europe has ever seen while globally, it was the hottest summer ever recorded.

In Europe, June and September were extraordinarily hot and this had a significant impact on air quality, particularly the levels of ozone. 

The June episode led to elevated levels of pollution for nearly three weeks, while the heatwave that arrived in September caused a period of severe ozone pollution that affected large areas of continental Europe for several days. CAMS explain that warm weather like this and ozone pollution so late in the year are rare and makes 2023 an exceptional year.

A large pollution episode – well above target threshold levels – occurred in February and lasted for more than three weeks. This affected France, Portugal, and Spain in the west and all the way to Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria in the east.

Analysis shows that there were two different, anthropogenic causes for this. Residential emissions dominated over western, southern, eastern Europe before moving into central Europe. The agricultural sector mainly contributed to pollution across western and central Europe, becoming more intense over the 14th to 15th February period. 

The third of the year’s pollution events examined by the report was driven by wildfires in Greece. CAMS included this episode, not because of its magnitude but because of the growing interest in the effects of this sort of event. Not least among the reasons for this is that CAMS has new a tool to measure PM concentration caused by wildfires. Previously it had been difficult to characterise the impact of wildfires on air pollution.

The report also discusses an event in September when the impact of anthropogenic pollution was exacerbated by dust blown northwards from the Sahara over Spain, Portugal, western France, Ireland and the UK, driven by a low-pressure system situated off the north-west coast of Spain that acted to draw up warm dry air from the Sahara on its eastern flank carrying dust with it.

Pollution events of note in 2023:

• 6th to 17th February and 22nd to 26th February PM pollution episode over central, eastern, western, and southern Europe.
• 5th to 22nd June ozone pollution episode that affected western, southern, central, northern, and eastern Europe.
• 22nd to 25th August wildfire PM episode that affected Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.
• 6th to 13th September combined ozone and PM pollution episode that affected western, southern, central, northern, and eastern Europe. This episode also occurred concurrently with a north African dust intrusion.
• 4th to 14th December PM pollution episode that affected central, southern, and eastern Europe.

The full report can be read here