Hajime Akimoto
Science 302, 1716 (2003);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1092666
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Global Air Quality and Pollution
Hajime Akimoto
The impact of global air pollution on climate and the environment is a new remote areas, and from 10 to 15 ppbv to 20 to
focus in atmospheric science. Intercontinental transport and hemispheric 30 ppbv over the mid- and high-latitude Pa-
air pollution by ozone jeopardize agricultural and natural ecosystems cific Ocean. One example of the spatial ex-
worldwide and have a strong effect on climate. Aerosols, which are spread tent of global ozone pollution is that the
globally but have a strong regional imbalance, change global climate average concentration of ozone in remote
through their direct and indirect effects on radiative forcing. In the 1990s, areas of East Asia is already high enough to
nitrogen oxide emissions from Asia surpassed those from North America jeopardize agricultural and natural ecosys-
and Europe and should continue to exceed them for decades. International tems there (14). It is easily seen, then, how
initiatives to mitigate global air pollution require participation from both the elevation of background levels of ozone
developed and developing countries. by long-range transport can cause the addi-
tion of ozone produced locally or regionally,
When the first measurements of high concen- egory of air pollutants that can be viewed in amounts that would not otherwise have
trations of CO over tropical Asia, Africa, and from satellites. Examples of the global dis- been critical, to exceed air-quality standards
South America were made available by the tribution of anthropogenic and natural aero- or critical levels (15, 16). This makes small
MAPS (Measurement of Air Pollution from sols derived from MODIS (Moderate- increments of ozone concentrations caused
Satellite) instrument launched in 1981 on the Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) on the by contributions from other continents an
space shuttle Columbia (1), it became clear TERRA satellite have been given by issue of great concern (17).
that air pollution was an international issue. Ramanathan et al. (7) and Kaufman et al. The atmospheric lifetime of CO is also
Those images showed not only that industrial (8). Nakajima et al. (9) derived global dis- long enough (1 to 2 months on average) to
air pollution from fossil fuel combustion tributions of aerosol particle number and allow intercontinental transport and hemi-
could affect regional and global air quality, cloud microphysical parameters, using the spheric air pollution. Because a significant
but that emissions from biomass burning (for- AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution portion of CO pollution is from automobiles
est fires, agricultural waste burning, and veg- Radiometers) remote sensing data, and and biomass burning (13), its intercontinental
etable fuel combustion) were important as Higurashi and Nakajima (10) showed the transport is usually more easily captured by
well, confirming the hypothesis of Crutzen et distribution of four major aerosols types observation than is that of ozone (18). Be-
al. (2). This meant that people in less devel- (soil dust and carbonaceous, sulfate, and cause the concentration of OH in remote
oped countries, as well as residents of indus- sea-salt aerosols) in the East China Sea areas is mainly controlled by CO, and the
trialized and rapidly growing developing region using SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide concentration of OH in the atmosphere deter-
countries, could suffer from air pollution gen- Field-of-view Sensor) data. These studies mines the lifetimes of most atmospheric trace
erated elsewhere. Another illustration of the show that satellite data can be useful for gases, including greenhouse gases such as
global character of air pollution came from revealing climatic and environmental im- CH4 and HCFC (13), global pollution by CO
measurements of tropospheric ozone made by plications of global air pollution. is worrisome because of its effect on the
the TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrom- Global air-quality issues exist only in re- oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere.
eter) and SAGE (Stratospheric Aerosol and gard to those pollutants whose atmospheric Another important aspect of global air
Gas Experiment) instruments on the Nimbus lifetimes are long enough (on the order of 1 pollution is the impact of aerosols on climate
7 satellite (3). Once again, the impact of week) for them to be transported at least to (7, 19). Aerosol lifetimes are approximately 1
biomass burning on regional ozone concen- another continent. One such trace gas is tro- to 2 weeks (19), which is significantly shorter
trations was demonstrated, in addition to that pospheric ozone, a potent greenhouse gas than that of ozone. Therefore, aerosols have a
of industrial pollution. More recently, obser- (11) that also is toxic to humans, animals, and more uneven distribution than ozone, both
vations of various tropospheric air pollutants plants. Because the atmospheric lifetime of horizontally and vertically, and are more con-
such as NO2, SO2, and HCHO by GOME ozone is 1 to 2 weeks in summer and 1 to 2 centrated near their source regions over con-
(Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) and months in winter (12), ozone produced in a tinents and in the boundary layer. The more
SCHIAMACHY (Scanning Imaging Absorp- polluted region of one continent can be trans- uneven distribution of tropospheric aerosols
tion Spectro-Meter for Atmospheric Chartog- ported to another continent all year long. causes highly heterogeneous radiative forc-
raphY) (4) and of CO by MOPITT (Measure- Hemispherical transport, whose characteristic ing, which can lead to climate effects occur-
ment of Pollution in the Troposphere) (5) time scale is about 1 month, can occur in all ring regionally as well as globally (7, 19).
have revealed pollution on a global scale. seasons except summer. Figure 1 shows how From the perspective of air quality, back-
Edwards et al. (6) obtained a picture of the model-calculated surface O3 during the grow- ground concentrations of anthropogenic aero-
processes affecting tropospheric O3 pro- ing season (May through August) in the sols in remote areas are much lower than
duction over Africa and the Atlantic, com- Northern Hemisphere has increased between those considered dangerous by air-quality
bining the data on TOMS O3, MOPITT CO, 1860 and 1993 (13). According to this anal- standards, because of their shorter lifetimes,
and GOME NO2. Aerosols are another cat- ysis, the concentration of surface O3 over the and intercontinental transport is more episod-
mid- and high-latitude Eurasian and North ic than for ozone.
Frontier Research System for Global Change, 3173-25
American continents was 15 to 25 parts per Studies of transboundary air pollution led
Showa-machi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama 236-0001, billion by volume (ppbv) in 1860 but has to the investigation of possible intercontinen-
Japan. increased to 40 to 50 ppbv even in relatively tal transport (20) and hemispheric air pollu-
Fig. 3. Changes in anthropogenic NOx Figure 3 shows the recent trend in NOx emis-
emissions over North America (United sions by continent in the Northern Hemisphere
States and Canada) (41), Europe (in- (40). Emissions from North America include
cluding Russia and the near and middle those from the United States and Canada (41);
East) (42), and Asia (East, Southeast,
and South Asia) [solid squares, (44);
European emissions include those from Russia
open squares, (45)]. The extrapolated and middle and near-East Asia (42, 43); and
line for Europe in the 1970s is based on Asian emissions include those from East, South-
OECD data (43). east, and South Asia (44, 45). Emissions from
North America and Europe (including adjacent
regions) have been nearly equal since the 1980s
and have each remained near 25 to 28 Tg/year.
After 1990, an apparently decreasing trend in
NOx emissions from Europe is thought to be due
to stringent emission controls in Western Euro-
pean countries. In contrast, Asian emissions,
which contributed only a minor fraction of glob-
al emissions during the 1970s, have increased
rapidly since then and surpassed emissions from
North America and Europe in the mid-1990s.
from the United States have an effect between row). Thus, the O3 from the United States This situation is expected to continue for at least
that of East Asia and Europe for vertical, me- affects Europe in the boundary layer and mid- the next couple of decades (46). In addition,
ridional, and zonal transport (Fig. 2, middle dle and upper troposphere. future increases of emissions from Africa and