Description:

Air quality in the world’s most populous cities (megacities) impacts a sizeable proportion of the global population. The rapid urbanization and growing number of megacities and urban complexes requires new types of research and services that make best use of science and available technology. Emissions and ambient concentrations of pollutants in the growing number of megacities are expected to increase significantly and are expected to have widespread local effects on the health of the population, on ecosystem degradation, and on visibility due to urban haze. Specifically, the regional tropospheric volatile organic compounds (VOCs) composition, reactive gasses (Ozone and NOx) and particle concentrations are modified by economic growth and anthropogenic emissions. For fast growing megacities in the developing world the true complexities of the problem are not known because few cities have air quality monitoring capabilities that would enable detailed studies to characterize the unique chemistries in these environments impacts on the global atmosphere.

Topics requested include:

• Unique reactive VOCs their sources and their influence on O₃-NOx-VOC-PM chemistry that is different from well-studied regions of the world.
• Contribution of natural emissions to atmospheric composition, interaction with the unique anthropogenic sources.
• Analytical approaches for quantifying trends in emissions and developing emission inventories using available satellite data.
• Maximum achievable accuracy for low cost air pollution monitoring networks to support air quality management decision making.
• Modeling approaches to quantity emissions