Svifryk í Reykjavík 2008 – 2012

Í dag var Rebekka Kienle, diploma nemi minn frá þýskalandi, með kynningu á verkefninu sínu:
PM10 concentration in Reykjavík 2008 – 2012 ABSTRACT

The particulate matter concentration in Reykjavík is rather low. Nevertheless, the daily limit value of 50 μg/m3 for PM10 is exceeded several times at the urban traffic monitoring station GRE in the center of Reykjavík in the time period 2008 – 2012 (on average 19 times per year). The annual average concentration is above the limit value, 20 μg/m3, for all the years, except in 2012. Comparing data from the GRE station with data from the urban background station FHG, different emission sources of PM10 in Reykjavík could be identified. Traffic plays an important role as an emission source in Reykjavík and contributes on average to almost one third to the total number of days of exceedances in these years. The PM10 level differs between the emission sources. Days of exceedances due to traffic show the lowest daily average concentration, whereas days of exceedances due to ash and dust storms recorded the highest PM10 concentrations.
Because negative health effects of PM10 have been observed in recent studies, it is important to predict the particulate matter concentrations in advance. A model to predict the PM10 concentrations in Reykjavík due to traffic and other local emission sources was constructed by Þröstur Þorsteinsson. The model is process-based with a few tunable parameters. Three model runs with different weighting of the parameters are compared. The objective was, to optimize the model, so that it reflects the measured PM10 values well. The investigations have shown that the model shows a good correlation between the measured and predicted PM10 concentrations but has problems identifying the days of exceedances due to local emission sources.