Finnish Regional Emission Model in Policy-Support
The focuses of air pollution policies in Europe have changed over the last decades. The risks of ecosystem acidification, and partly eutrophication, have decreased thanks to emission and deposition reductions by successful policies of the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, the European Union and by national legislation. In recent years the human health impacts have become the main concern , especially due to atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM). These changes in priorities required new modelling tools for supporting national and international policymaking. This paper describes the development of such a policy-supporting tool, the Finnish Regional Emission Scenario (FRES) model. The main features that are important to assess different environmental problems, including the interfaces to atmospheric dispersion models and the spatial scales of mapping effects, are demonstrated with several policy-support studies. The earlier cases concentrated on ecosystem impacts of acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone, mainly due to long-range transboundary pollution. The current emphasis on the health impacts of PM assesses both long-range and local contributions. The new PM modelling challenges include the need of the high spatial resolution of emission sources.
Keywords: fine particles, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, emission models, integrated assessment modeling