Investigation of Pollution Transport to Taiwan

• Applicant: Dr. Andreas Richter
• Subject Area: Atmospheric Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 448170346

Air pollution in Asia is dominated by anthropogenic emissions from the rapidly developing economies in China and other countries on the one hand and emissions from biomass burning, in particular in South-East Asia on the other hand. While largest pollutant concentrations are found close to the sources, transport is also important, both in clearing polluted air masses in emission regions and in bringing pollution to areas far away from emissions. The East-Asian monsoon plays a large role in driving transport of pollution and also the advection of clean air from the Pacific. As a result, air quality in Taiwan is affected not only by local by pollution, but also by transport of pollution from China and biomass burning emissions from Indochina, and therefore offers an ideal measurement position to study this phenomenon.In order to investigate the different contributions to local pollution levels, the research station Cape Fuguei at the Northern tip of Taiwan will be equipped with a MAX-DOAS instrument focusing on observations of NO2, HCHO, C2H2O2 and aerosols. This complements the existing instrumentation (in-situ aerosol and trace gas observations, lidar, photometers) and will be used to create a multi-year time series of tropospheric columns and vertical profiles of the trace gases of interest. The intention is to continue the measurements after the end of the project. Within the project, attempts will be made to improve the information content of the MAX-DOAS observations for elevated pollution layers through polarised observations, choice of special observation geometries, exploitation of the wavelength dependency and different treatment of the background spectrum used in the analysis. The resulting data set will be combined with regional satellite observations of GOME-2, OMI, S5P and (if available) GEMS, with meteorological data and with back-trajectories in order to identify source regions for pollution transport to Taiwan and to quantify their relevance on local air quality. The MAX-DOAS retrievals, together with other observations from the observatory as well as satellite measurements will then be linked to dedicated WRF-chem simulations for better interpretation of the chemical and transport situations and the role of Monsoon in air pollution transport. The expected outcome of the project is a quantification of the impact of pollution transport to Taiwan, the source regions and source types involved and the role of the Asian Monsoon in driving this transport.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Taiwan
• Partner Organisation: National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. John Philip Burrows
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Wei-Nai Chen; Dr. Yi-Chun Chen; Dr. Charles K. Chou, Ph.D.; Dr. Chuan-Yao Lin