Analysis of Air Pollutant Emission Scenarios for the Danube region: Benefits of modal shifts in transport, climate mitigation and climate-efficient air pollution mitigation in the Danube region

This report investigates air quality, health and crop production impacts in the Danube region for two types of air pollutant emission scenarios: 1. A modal shift in freight transport scenarios for inland waterways and road modes only, which includes a reference scenario and a scenario in which we increase the inland waterways freight transport in the Danube region by 20%; this is complemented by a fictitious modal shift scenario in which 50% of the road freight transport is assumed to shift to inland waterways. The pollutant emissions for these scenarios are based on JRC’s global pollutant and greenhouse gas emission database EDGAR. 2. Climate mitigation scenarios, developed in a framework of identifying climate-efficient air quality controls with optimal climate benefits at a global scale focusing on the impact of shorter-lived pollutants which directly or indirectly influence the climate. The pollutant emissions for the latter scenarios are available as a public dataset from the FP5 ECLIPSE research project. For both analyses, the pollutant emission scenarios are analysed with JRC’s global reduced-form air quality model TM5-FASST, which provides pollutant concentrations and their associated impacts on human health and agricultural crop production losses. The modal shift scenario analysis indicates that a 20% increase of present day inland waterway transport (without a modification in road freight transport) has a negligible impact on air quality in the Danube countries. One extreme scenario case whereby road freight transport is assumed to use modern, low-emission trucks, 50% of which moves to waterway transport with current cargo ships, leads to a net deterioration of air quality with potentially an increase of annual premature mortalities in the Danube region with about 300. The opposite extreme case, assuming the 50% road freight shift to waterways is exclusively with old-type high-emission heavy duty vehicles, leads to a net effect of the same magnitude but opposite sign, i.e. a net improvement of air quality with a decrease in annual premature mortalities of about 300. The analysis of the ECLIPSE climate mitigation scenarios (both greenhouse gases and short-lived pollutants) focusing on the Danube basin region suggests a maximum potential decrease in annual air pollution-induced mortalities, relative to a current air quality legislation scenario without climate mitigation of 40000 by 2050. The corresponding reduction in crop losses in the area is estimated to be a combined total of 3.7 MTonnes/year in 2050 for wheat, maize, rice and soy beans.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

Impact evaluation of biomass used in small combustion activities sector on air emissions: Analyses of emissions from Alpine, Adriatic-Ionian and Danube EU macro-regions by using the EDGAR emissions inventory

The emissions from small stationary combustion activities sector, in particular from the energy needs for residential buildings, have significant shares in total emissions of EU28. Therefore, measures to mitigate the emissions from this less regulated sector related to implementation checking are needed. In this study, we analysed the changes in fuel mix for this sector over 1990-2012 period, the emissions and their distribution over the areas covered by European Union Strategy for Alpine macro-region (EUSALP), European Union Strategy for Adriatic and Ionian macro-region (EUSAIR) and European Union Strategy for Danube macro-region (EUSDR). The emissions gridmaps of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), black carbon (BC) and benzo(a)pyren (BaP) are presented for the year 2010; in specific circumstances, these pollutants are known to produce negative effects on health. For this research, we used the data and information of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) versions v4.3.2 and v4.tox3. Accurate emissions estimates are important to evaluate the impacts of fuel combustion in small stationary combustion activities sector on air quality, human health and crops. Inventories of GHGs, air pollutants and toxic pollutants included in EDGAR are developed by using, as input, fuel consumption from IEA (2014) and emissions factors from scientific literature and official guidebooks such as EMEP/EEA (2013). Working together with emissions inventory experts from selected countries in these macro-regions, the effects of improvements of fuel consumption statistics, biomass in particular, on emissions in the latest years have been quantified by comparing EDGAR data with national data. Besides sectorial emissions estimation, the emissions distribution is also important in the inventory development process. In order to distribute emissions consistently for all countries included in Alpine, Adriatic-Ionian and Danube macro-regions, the EDGAR team upgraded the WEB-based gridding tool with a module for small stationary combustion activities. Emissions estimation and distribution are key elements in preparing a complete input for chemical transport models and further evaluate the impacts of these emissions on air quality, health and crops. This report aims to provide the policy makers and scientists insights on the representativeness and uncertainty of local emissions from the residential sector that play an important role on air quality. These datasets can be used as input for the atmospheric chemical transport models for air pollutants and can illustrate the importance of emission inventory uncertainties and discrepancies.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

Fossil CO2 and GHG emissions of all world countries

The Paris Agreement plans global stocktakes, to which the UNFCCC GHG emission inventories are the primary input. To complete this picture, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides for all world countries emission timeseries from 1970 until 2016 for CO2 and until 2012 for the other GHGs.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

Evaluating EDGARv4.tox2 speciated mercury emissions ex-post scenarios and their impacts on modelled global and regional wet deposition patterns

Speciated mercury gridded emissions inventories together with chemical transport models and concentration measurements are essential when investigating both the effectiveness of mitigation measures and the mercury cycle in the environment. Since different mercury species have contrasting behaviour in the atmosphere, their proportion in anthropogenic emissions could determine the spatial impacts. In this study, the time series from 1970 to 2012 of the EDGARv4.tox2 global mercury emissions inventory are described; the total global mercury emission in 2010 is 1772 tonnes. Global grid-maps with geospatial distribution of mercury emissions at a 0.1° × 0.1° resolution are provided for each year. Compared to the previous tox1 version, tox2 provides updates for more recent years and improved emissions in particular for agricultural waste burning, power generation and artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sectors. We have also developed three retrospective emissions scenarios based on different hypotheses related to the proportion of mercury species in the total mercury emissions for each activity sector; improvements in emissions speciation are seen when using information primarily from field measurements. We evaluated them using the GEOS-Chem 3-D mercury model in order to explore the influence of speciation shifts, to reactive mercury forms in particular, on regional wet deposition patterns. The reference scenario S1 (EDGARv4.tox2_S1) uses speciation factors from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP); scenario S2 (“EPA_power”) uses factors from EPA's Information Collection Request (ICR); and scenario S3 (“Asia_filedM”) factors from recent scientific publications. In the reference scenario, the sum of reactive mercury emissions (Hg-P and Hg 2+ ) accounted for 25.3% of the total global emissions; the regions/countries that have shares of reactive mercury emissions higher than 6% in total global reactive mercury are China+ (30.9%), India+ (12.5%) and the United States (9.9%). In 2010, the variations of reactive mercury emissions amongst the different scenarios are in the range of −19.3 t/yr (China+) to 4.4 t/yr (OECD_Europe). However, at the sector level, the variation could be different, e.g., for the iron and steel industry in China reaches 15.4 t/yr. Model evaluation at the global level shows a variation of approximately ±10% in wet deposition for the three emissions scenarios. An evaluation of the impact of mercury speciation within nested grid sensitivity simulations is performed for the United States and modelled wet deposition fluxes are compared with measurements. These studies show that using the S2 and S3 emissions of reactive mercury, can improve wet deposition estimates near sources

Fossil CO2 emissions of all world countries - 2020 Report

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2019 for fossil CO2 for all countries. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent and quantitative view of global fossil CO2 emissions.JRC.C.5 - Air and Climat

An efficient strategy to select head and neck cancer patients for adaptive radiotherapy

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Adaptive radiotherapy (ART) is workload intensive but only benefits a subgroup of patients. We aimed to develop an efficient strategy to select candidates for ART in the first two weeks of head and neck cancer (HNC) radiotherapy.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study retrospectively enrolled 110 HNC patients who underwent modern photon radiotherapy with at least 5 weekly in-treatment re-scan CTs. A semi auto-segmentation method was applied to obtain the weekly mean dose (D mean) to OARs. A comprehensive NTCP-profile was applied to obtain NTCP's. The difference between planning and actual values of D mean (ΔD mean) and dichotomized difference of clinical relevance (BIOΔNTCP) were used for modelling to determine the cut-off maximum ΔD mean of OARs in week 1 and 2 (maxΔD mean_1 and maxΔD mean_2). Four strategies to select candidates for ART, using cut-off maxΔD mean were compared. RESULTS: The Spearman's rank correlation test showed significant positive correlation between maxΔD mean and BIOΔNTCP (p-value &lt;0.001). For major BIOΔNTCP (&gt;5%) of acute and late toxicity, 10.9% and 4.5% of the patients were true candidates for ART. Strategy C using both cut-off maxΔD mean_1 (3.01 and 5.14 Gy) and cut-off maxΔD mean_2 (3.41 and 5.30 Gy) showed the best sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values (0.92, 0.82, 0.38, 0.99 for acute toxicity and 1.00, 0.92, 0.38, 1.00 for late toxicity, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: We propose an efficient selection strategy for ART that is able to classify the subgroup of patients with &gt;5% BIOΔNTCP for late toxicity using imaging in the first two treatment weeks.</p

GHG emissions of all world countries

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2020 for fossil CO2 and until 2018 for non-CO2 GHGs for all countries, and covers the emissions and removals from land use and forestry for the years 2000 to 2015. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent and quantitative view of global GHG emissions.JRC.C.5 - Air and Climat

Fossil CO2 emissions of all world countries - 2018 Report

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides time series of CO2 emissions for all world countries from 1970 until 2017. In this report, fossil CO2 emissions are presented for the period 1990-2017 as well as the per capita and per GDP trends.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

Development of advanced preselection tools to reduce redundant plan comparisons in model-based selection of head and neck cancer patients for proton therapy

PURPOSE: In the Netherlands, head and neck cancer (HNC) patients are selected for proton therapy (PT) based on estimated normal tissue complication probability differences (ΔNTCP) between photons and protons, which requires a plan comparison (VMAT vs. IMPT). We aimed to develop tools to improve patient selection for plan comparisons. METHODS: This prospective study consisted of 141 consecutive patients in which a plan comparison was done. IMPT plans of patients not qualifying for PT were classified as 'redundant'. To prevent redundant IMPT planning, 5 methods that were primarily based on regression models were developed to predict IMPT Dmean to OARs, by using data from VMAT plans and volumetric data from delineated targets and OARs. Then, actual and predicted plan comparison outcomes were compared. The endpoint was being selected for proton therapy. RESULTS: Seventy out of 141 patients (49.6%) qualified for PT. Using the developed preselection tools, redundant IMPT planning could have been prevented in 49-68% of the remaining 71 patients not qualifying for PT (=specificity) when the sensitivity of all methods was fixed to 100%, i.e., no false negative cases (positive predictive value range: 57-68%, negative predictive value: 100%). CONCLUSION: The advanced preselection tools, which uses volume and VMAT dose data, prevented labour intensive creation of IMPT plans in up to 68% of non-qualifying patients for PT. No patients qualifying for PT would have been incorrectly denied a plan comparison. This method contributes significantly to a more cost-effective model-based selection of HNC patients for PT