Extreme Climate Events and Air Quality

Dear Colleagues,

Atmosphere dedicates this Special Issue to the influence of weather and climate events on air quality.

In recent decades, air pollution has become a major environmental risk to human health, with great risk for children, older adults, and people with heart and lung diseases. Many world cities experience air pollution episodes regularly. The occurrence of air pollution episodes is often related to either high emissions of air pollutants or poor dispersion conditions, or to a combination of both, resulting from either local-scale conditions or regional-scale transport. Thus, meteorological conditions on various spatial and temporal scales have been reported to strongly affect air quality.

Extreme climate events, such as heat waves and droughts, have been reported in several studies to have consistently shown a synergistic effect to air pollution. Nonetheless, the potential weather–air pollution interaction during wildfires and dust storms is still poorly explored. Extreme events are also changing in terms of in duration, frequency, and spatial extent in response to climate change with potential impacts on future air quality. Therefore, understanding the impact of extreme climate events on air quality in a changing climate becomes crucial.

Original results and review papers related to the analysis of the synergistic effect between air pollution and weather and climate events are therefore welcomed. Authors are encouraged to analyse the underlying mechanisms associated to the occurrence of the weather interactions with air quality with the purpose of establishing linkages between local- to synoptic-scale patterns and air pollution, from both anthropogenic (traffic, industry, etc.) and natural (fires, dust storms) sources. Considering climate change, studies showing the health co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and urban air pollution are of particular interest for this Special Issue. This Special Issue is also an appropriate venue for papers that deal with the emerging field of compound events.

This Special Issue intends to be a useful and valuable snapshot of the overarching field for practitioners, and a means of stimulating multidisciplinary collaborations. Therefore, storyline approaches, which examines the role of the various factors contributing to the event as it unfolded, are also encouraged.

Dr. Ana Russo
Dr. Célia Gouveia
Guest Editors

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