PM2.5 concentrations in London for 2008: A modelling analysis of contributions from road traffic

We report on the analysis of contributions from road traffic emissions to PM2.5 concentrations within London for 2008 with the OSCAR Air Quality Assessment System. A spatio-temporal evaluation of the OSCAR system has been conducted with measurements from the London air quality network (LAQN). For the predicted and measured hourly time series of concentrations at 18 sites in London, the medians of correlation, mean absolute error, index of agreement and factor of two (FAC2) of all stations were 0.80, 4.1 µg/m3, 0.86 and 74% respectively. Spatial evaluation of modelled and observed annual mean concentrations also showed a fairly good agreement with all the values falling within the FAC2 range. According to model predictions, the urban increment (including the contributions from urban traffic and other urban sources) was evaluated to be on the average 18%, 33%, 39% and 43% of the total PM2.5 in suburban environments, in the urban background, near roads, and near busy roads, respectively. However, the highest values of the urban traffic increment can be around 50 percent of the total PM2.5 concentrations near motorways and major roads. The total concentrations (including regional background, and the contributions from urban traffic and other urban sources) can therefore be almost three times the regional background. The total urban increment close to busy roads was around 7–8 µg/m3 in which the estimated traffic contribution is over 2 µg/m3. On the average, urban traffic contributes approximately 1 µg/m3 of PM2.5 to the urban background across London. According to modelling, approximately 2/3 of the traffic increment was originated from exhaust emissions and most of the rest due to brake and tyre wear