The particles moved on and the air quality forecasting challenge goes on...

Posted by Geoff Dollard, Practice Director: Air & Environmental Quality on 1 February 2012 on 3 February 2012

Well, unlike Wednesday I didn’t wake at 4 am yesterday. Instead, it was a few hours later when a friendly knee in the back from my wife reminded me I was late. Up and out, cold and frosty, a bluish exhaust-plume from a neighbour’s old diesel car reminding me immediately of the PM2.5 pollution particles that AEA’s forecasters had tracked heading towards the UK yesterday; its bluish because the particles are about the same size as the wavelength of blue light.

 

Anyway, at the office the updated forecast showed that the small particles had, in the end, been shoved north. PM2.5 measurements were low as was the wider pollution forecast for the day, with only a scattering of moderate pollution level areas around the UK.

 

It was an interesting 24 hours for the team nonetheless. We should be grateful air quality was better than it could have been and are reminded of the challenges of forecasting - and the balance we have to make when preparing our daily forecasts for Defra and the Devolved Administrations.

 

A recent Environmental Audit Committee Report noted that the costs to society from poor air quality are on a par with those from smoking and obesity. Improving public awareness, it argued, would be the single most important way of improving air quality – helping to inform people about the action they can take to reduce their emissions and their exposure to air pollution.

 

So, it’s a question of democracy, responsibility (I must advise my neighbour not to run the car to defrost and warm it) and the right of the citizen to know and to be able to act on best information. There is the challenge: to summarise all the physics and chemistry and associated uncertainties and package the advice in a useful, understandable and balanced form for the general public.

 

This is where a pollution index is of value - because it embodies all of this in a useful summary format. Indicators have been in use when presenting air pollution information for many years. Following a request from Defra, in June 2011 The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) reported back to Defra (Review of the UK Air Quality Index) that there was a lack of public awareness regarding the links between air pollution and ill-health. It also found a lack of understanding concerning the existing air quality information available to the public. It recommended that greater public awareness be achieved by improving the UK Air Quality Index.

 

This can now be seen at: http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/air-pollution/daqi

 

An enhancement of this service implemented by AEA on behalf of the Scottish Government is Know and Respond Scotland. You may have caught my colleagues discussing the service with BBC reporters last week: Pollution alert system launched in Scotland.

 

Know and Respond is a new air quality alert system. It gives users free alerts by text, email, etc. when air pollution is forecast in their area. The alerts contain health advice and are beneficial to people with medical conditions that may be affected by pollution, such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema. It may also benefit people whose breathing gets worse when air pollution increases. This early warning service allows the individual to take precautionary action when necessary to minimise the effects of pollution.

 

Take a look at the service here. Do you have a similar service where you live?

 

In the meantime the forecast for tomorrow is not too “exciting”; http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/latest/. It has got me thinking about spiders though.......