Seasonal Evaluation of EU Road Traffic Emission Abatement Strategies on Photochemical Pollution in Northern Italy

Road traffic is widely recognised to be a significant and increasing source of photochemical pollution precursors. EU Directives in force up to 2010 require substantial NOx and VOC emission decreases. Such reductions can improve or further deteriorate air quality because of the emission mix and the photochemical regime characterizing the area under study. The comprehensive modelling system GAMES (Gas Aerosol Modelling Evaluation System) (Volta and Finzi, 2004) has been used to evaluate the seasonal impact of the EU Directive abatement strategies on road traffic emissions in Northern Italy. In this area frequent stagnating meteorological conditions and elevated Mediterranean solar radiation, associated with critical anthropogenic emissions, regularly cause high ozone level episodes, especially during summer months. Several experimental campaigns (Vecchi and Valli, 1999), (Neftel et al., 2002) as well as modelling studies (Silibello et al., 1998), (Baertsch-Ritter et al., 2003), (Gabusi and Volta, 2004) have been carried out to investigate photochemical pollution in such complex domain.