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Summary

This report presents an overview of the air quality monitoring practice in Europe in recent years. The summary is based on information in questionnaires sent out in 1994 and returned by 24 countries, and other information from national and technical reports for some of those countries and for 6 other countries. Information was received from a total of 30 European countries, all 15 EU Member States inclusive. No information was available from Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, FYROM, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Based upon monitoring requirements set in EU Directives, the "monitoring practice" is described in terms of coverage (compounds, spatial, temporal, site category), monitoring methods, data availability, data reporting and network/site description.

The information is presented at several levels of aggregation: countrywise network description tables (Appendix B), country summaries (Appendix A), European wide summary tables of monitoring practice (Chapter 3), a basis for the European scale summary description (Chapter 4).

It is acknowledged that the information collected is not complete in all respects for all countries. Only for some countries, comments to the first draft summaries were received (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Portugal, Sweden). The summaries are therefore presented with the reservation that the information may not be complete.

The coverage of air quality monitoring in Europe, in terms of time, space, compounds and site categories is substantial for most of the reporting countries. There are a total of close to 5,000 sites for urban/local monitoring and more than 750 sites for regional monitoring. Hot-spot sites (traffic, industry) is less well represented than are general urban background sites. In a number of countries, lead monitoring seems no longer to be well represented and in some countries ozone is not monitored. Ozone precursors are monitored at one or a few regional sites in 7 countries only.

From the information available for this report, the shortcomings or gaps in the coverage, in terms of complete mapping of areas of high concentrations and exceedances, cannot be judged in detail. Such an evaluation must be carried out by each state.

Table S1 gives the inventorized number of monitoring sites in each country, for various site categories of local and regional sites. Figures S.1 and S.2 shows total number of sites for local and regional monitoring in each country.

Table S.1: Spatial coverage, European AQ monitoring.

LOCAL REGIONAL
No. of
sites

No. of
cities/towns

Site class distribution

No. of
sites

SO2 +*

Dep.*

O3*

UG*

UT*

Ul*

Rl*

1

1

1

0

Austria

165

10

100

30

20

15

55

55

35

55

Belgium

168

60

125

30

13

25

Denmark

18

3

7

8

3

0

17

6

17

3

Finland

120

30

71

18

28

3

22

8

7

9

France

875

875

21

17

21

Germany

467

232

156

79

74

658)

578)

Greece

31

11

22

2

7

0

1

1

1

0

Ireland

81

15

45

25

10

1

12

7

5

Italy

1293)

41

129

34)

3

3

2

Luxembourg

4

1

1

2

1

0

2

1

0

1

the Netherlands

20

9

7

13

0

0

36

30

14

26

Portugal

80

5

6

15

6

53

13

12

3

3

Spain

893

288 438

167

190 >7

Sweden

66

45

63

3

49

12

36

5

U.K.

515)

34

45

2

4

>38

38

32

15

Iceland

3

2

1

1

0

1

1

1

Liechtenstein

1

1

1

0

0

0

Norway

6

6

6

0

0

0

39

12

34

15

Albania

23

11

23

Bulgaria

100

100

Croatia

62

8

62

1

1

0

0

Cyprus 2 1 0 2 0 0 1 1 1 1

Czech Republic

6501)

Estonia

16

9

8

2

6

2

2

2

2

Hungary

39

39

2

2

2

Poland

>540

7)

>500

33

11

Romania

152

152

138

4

1372

4

Slovakia

37

17

14

6

10

7

7

7

4

Slovenia

86

86

4

Switzerland

986)

55

31

12

54

TOTAL

>4983

>818


UG - Urban general (in-city background) site 
UT - Urban traffic site
UI - Urban industrial site
RI - Industrial site not in urban area
SO2+ - S and N compounds in air (gases and aerosol)
Dep - Precipitation chemistry
O3 - Ozone


1) Total for urban and regional. Site classification not known.
2) All stations measure pH, conductivity and acidity/alkalinity.14 sites measure major ions.
3) Not complete. 8) The number of sites may not be quite correct.
4) Only EMEP sites
5) Plus 1100 passive NO2 sampling sites
6) Plus 12 passive SO2 and 102 passive NO2 sites.
7) All cities with >20,000 inhabitants

 

 

 

Czech Republic: The number gives the sum of local and regional monitoring sites.

Figure S.1: Number of sites per country for the monitoring of urban/local/industrial air pollution.

 

 

 


Czech Republic: Sum of local and regional sites. Romania: Stations with only precipitation chem. (137) not included in the number.

Figure S.2: Number of sites per country for the monitoring of regional air pollution (incl. wet deposition).

 

International monitoring networks are also inventorized: ECE-EMEP, OSPAR, HELCOM, MEDPOL, GEMS/AIR, GAW, TOR, AMAP. Table S2 gives an overview of number and types of sites in these networks. Many stations operate under many of these networks simultaneously.

Table S.2: Summary of recent monitoring activities in Europe in international programmes.
For all programmes: Not all compounds are measured at all sites.

Programme

Sites

Countries

Compounds (summary)

EMEP (1995)

126

28

S- and N-compounds in air (gases and particles) and precipitation, and O3 and VOC in air.

OSPAR (1994)
Precip.

Aerosol/gas

25

12

10

6

Cd, Hg, NO3, NH4, (priority)
As, Cr, Cu, Ni, Zn, organo-halogens (grey list)

Cd, Hg, a-HCN, g-HCN, HNO3, NO3, NO2, NO, NH3, NH4 (priority)
As, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn (grey list)

HELCOM

31

8

N compounds in air (gases and particles), and in precipitation.
Metals (Pb, Cd, Cu, Zn) in airborne particles and in precipitation.
Cr, Ni, As, Hg in precipitation.

MEDPOL

13

10

Emphasis on heavy metals in aerosol, and heavy metals and major ions in precipitation.

GAW

61

100

42

16

14

23

29

19

5

10

Precipitation chemistry.

"Trace gases": O3 (81), NOx (43), SO2 (34), CO2 (20), CH4 (7), N2O (3), CFCs (4).

Aerosols

Radiation

Turbidity

TOR (1994)

29

O3, NO, NO2, NOy, CH4, CO, NMHC, JNO2, met.data.

AMAP

5*

5

Acid.dep., heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, PAH

GEMS/AIR (1993/94)

9

9

SO2, SPM

* Only one site, Ny Ålesund at Spitzbergen, in Europe.

As a rule, monitoring data are in most countries not readily available to external users, soon after monitoring. From the available information, Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, U.K., Norway and Cyprus make data from monitors available to external users in near-real-time. This list is probably not complete. In Germany near-real-time data are published on videotext (television) and/or screentext (T-online) several times a day.

Most countries from which we have specific information on this topic, have validated data available in their own data bases within 6 months after measurements. Thus, there should be no problem in principle in making the data available to the EEA within 6 months into the year after.

Reports containing data statistics, summaries, evaluations and assessments are available annually from most countries. Those reports present the air pollution data in various ways, and not always in accordance with the requirements of the EU Directives on parameters/statistics to be reported. This makes comparisons of air quality between countries in Europe problematic.

In many countries, the monitoring system is undergoing substantial modification (e.g. Austria) and extension (e.g. UK). There is a trend towards establishing national centres for on-line data collection (e.g. France, Norway).

Many countries reported the use of dispersion models as part of their air quality surveillance, e.g. Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK. In Norway, the AirQUIS system being established in some cities provides the ability to model urban-scale air quality in near-real time.

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