Not Saharan Dust

[knocker]

One of the authors of one of the papers was on R4 this morning discussing this.and that much of the pollution is caused by Sulphur Dioxide, Nitrous Oxides and Ammonia Nitrate. . He came out with the astonishing figure (unless I misheard him. that a quarter of the CAP budget goes up in smoke (ammonia).

Quote

Air pollution episode of March–April 2014

The article in ERL focused on a specific episode of very high concentrations of fine particulate matter over the UK (and most parts of Western Europe), which occurred in the spring of 2014. While the event was widely referred to be caused by ‘Saharan Dust’, the model analysis presented by Dr Vieno and his colleagues illustrate the complexity of such events. The paper provides compelling evidence from both model simulations and the analysis of detailed particulate species monitoring data from two of the UK EMEP1 ‘Supersites’, pinpointing the main contribution to this event as secondary inorganic aerosols (SIA) and specifically ammonium nitrate.

Both papers relating to this are open access.

http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/important-foreign-contribution-uk-particulate-matter-pollution