Plenary Lecture
Airport Air Quality – A Review
Professor Costas G. Helmis
Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology
Faculty of Physics
University of Athens
Greece
E-mail: chelmis@phys.uoa.gr
Abstract: It is well known that local air quality is a limiting factor in the development of many airports at different countries. In fact, the ambient concentrations of air pollutants at various airports are already close to or above the limit values according to the regulations, while there is not yet certain evidence of safe thresholds regarding health effects and the air pollutants limit values. Thus, if air traffic is to continue to increase, its impact on local air quality over the greater airport area will have to be better understood and certain solutions have to be found. This presentation gives an overview of the related issues and the studies that have to be conducted regarding the airport air quality (AAQ). More specifically the emissions, transport and chemical transformation of pollutants are of different scales (aircraft engine, exhaust plume, whole aircraft, airport scale, regional scale and global scale) and require appropriate different methodologies of measurements and estimations. The AAQ modeling is a complicated task involving physical and numerical modelling characterized with different scales (e.g. airport scale with the regional scale). Also, in order to assess the impact of airport all sources, an emission inventory should be considered, which has to satisfy all scales, for past and real time forecasting, including the information of the “hot spots” of airport air quality. The above mentioned issues were studied in details in the framework of the European project “A European Network of Excellence for an Environmentally Compatible Air Transport System (ECATS)” where the University of Athens was a partner and it is worth mentioning here certain suggestions or solutions as well as certain tools to overcome these difficulties, which are outcomes of this project. Thus, examples and results of studies will be given including the methodologies of measurements related with air pollutants, the development of AAQ databases and the influence of airport and aircraft emissions upon the air quality in the surroundings.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Costas G. Helmis is Professor in the Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology, Faculty of Physics of the Athens University, Greece. He received his BSc in Physics in 1972, MSc in Electronics in 1975, MSc in Automation in 1976 and PhD in Physics in 1981 from the University of Athens. The fields of his scientific interests/activities are Atmospheric Physics, Climatology, development of instrumentation for remote and in-situ measurements, Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) Physics over land and sea, the Physics of buildings, applications of wind energy and passive cooling systems, urban air pollution (outdoor and indoor) and trans-boundary air pollution. Professor Helmis has participated in 83 international, European and national research projects, in 34 of the above he acted as a principal investigator (PI) and he has great experience in the design and realization of experimental campaigns and the development/use of innovated in-situ and remote systems covering the needs for monitoring basic meteorological parameters and air pollutants. This experience is reflected in studies related with the lower troposphere, the atmospheric boundary layer structure, the airflow patterns over urban areas, the microclimatic characteristics, the acquisition of datasets and analysis of air pollutant’s concentration and the classification of atmospheric circulation with respect to air pollution episodes. He has 124 publications in scientific journals, 195 publications in conference proceedings, 94 participations in technical reports, 55 other publications and over of 1.900 citations on publications in International Journals and Conferences, excluding self-citations. He has been Chairman of the Faculty of Physics (2008-2012), Director of the Department of Applied Physics (2000-2007), Director of the Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology (2013-today), Head of the Lab. of Meteorology (1997-2000), Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Centre of Renewable Energy Sources (1997-2000), member of the Council of Scientists-INTAS (1996-1998), board member (1988-1991) and President (1994-1996) of the Board of the Greek Physical Society and he has collaborated with the European Environmental Agency on air quality issues (ETC/AQ) during the period 1996-2000.