Study of Air Pollutant Transport in city of Istanbul

Istanbul was victim of severe air pollution episodes during 2002. There is indication from air quality observations that long range transport of emissions from Europe might have contributed along with the local emissions sources. While there are studies focused on air pollution problems in Europe, long range transport of pollutants from Europe to the northern and western Turkey hasn’t been sufficiently studied. The main objective of this research is to fill in this gap by investigating the reasons and sources for air pollution episodes in Istanbul. Specifically, we focus on the effect of European emissions on air quality in Northern and Western Turkey. For this purpose, we setup a modeling framework that includes emissions model, meteorological model (i.e., Fifth-Generation NCAR / Penn State Mesoscale Model, MM5) and advanced air quality model (i.e., Community Multiscale Air Quality Model, CMAQ).