Advanced UK Observing Network For Air Quality, Public Heath and Greenhouse Gas Research

Emissions of gases and particles to the atmosphere have profound effects across geographic scales, from the very local, on individuals, to the global climate system. Air pollutants include short-lived species that affect human health and damage ecosystems and longer-lived gases that impact on climate processes and stratospheric ozone. There are major outstanding scientific uncertainties associated with measuring i) the emissions, transformations and impacts of air pollution on public health, ii) the natural and man-made budgets of greenhouse gases and iii) the changing nature of ozone depleting chemicals. This is science that is globally significant but that has direct and urgent UK relevance. Science gaps currently limit the effectiveness of efforts to reduce the national health costs of pollution and ecosystem damage, and they create major uncertainties in the delivery of cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions and industry actions to support the recovery of stratospheric ozone.
New capital investment is required in a transformative and open access research infrastructure for the UK to support world-leading scientific research in the atmospheric sciences and to deliver key evidence to Government as a co-benefit. The investment will support the UK in its efforts to improve air quality in cities by providing direct evidence of pollution composition, trends and where actions would be effective. Consequently, it will enhance the UK capacity to meet European and national targets for human pollution exposure, for ozone ecosystem exposure, the National Emissions Ceiling Directive and trans-boundary Gothenburg protocol. It will provide unique high precision information on national emissions of greenhouse gases that will demonstrate UK commitments to, and compliance with, its own legally binding targets set out in Climate Change Act and UK actions via UNFCCC, Paris and Montreal Agreements. It will generate science that will give the UK a leadership position for developing global policy on new emerging chemicals, but also provide science that can be used practically at the local scale by individual cities and Local Authorities. All these evidential requirements, if met, have the potential to generate large financial savings (in health costs), economic opportunities for business through effective carbon reduction strategies and improvements in quality of life.
The investment would support a new integrated network of long-term atmospheric facilities for research permanently located in the UK:
i) New urban air pollution research observatories ("supersites") located in central Manchester, Birmingham and London.
ii) A new real-world road transport emissions research capability supporting to improve emissions inventories
iii) An upgraded national research system for the quantification of UK greenhouse gases, their sources, sinks and emission rates, including improved national calibration facilities for long-lived gases.
The investment builds on existing observatory infrastructure in the UK, adding state of the art research instrumentation to some strategically located Defra air pollution monitoring stations in UK cities and to the network of telecoms tall-towers used to verify UK emissions inventories. The capital required is £4.3M in total, predominately composed of commercially available instrumentation, plus some expenditure on bespoke software and data integration capability. The proposal is to deliver the concept by end of 2018. Annual resource/recurrent costs for operation are anticipated to be of the order 8% of capital, and have been confirmed from a mix of sources including HEIs, NERC national capability and other external agencies including Defra, DfT, and Local Authorities.

Atmospheric pollution is highlighted in the NERC science strategy as a key area where new research can impact directly on an improved quality of life, generate economic savings and create new low-carbon and low-pollution business opportunities.

Both urban air pollution and greenhouse gases have strong policy, health and business drivers and the whole project has been built from the bottom-up with relevant stakeholders who have been part of the NERC advisory group that has developed this project. In the urban environment the three new air pollution supersites are each linked to impact and end-users through joint working with both local and national stakeholders. In Manchester the urban supersite is delivered as a collaboration between the university, the City of Manchester Council and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM). In Birmingham, this is a collaboration between the university and Birmingham City Council and in London between Kings College and the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Each local academic partner will work with local organizations to maximize local impacts, for example providing insight into city scale trends, local changes and impacts of local policy decisions.

All aspects of the project are from the outset also linked to impact at a national scale through partner government bodies who are contributing in-kind and in cash. All three urban supersites add to the national Defra AURN air pollution network and the data will form part of the Defra real-time information system. Broader scientific impacts from the research will be generated through science co-ownership between NCAS and Defra, utilizing the strong existing links including joint appointments between the two organisations. The Defra Air Quality Expert Group, will be used a key forum where new science from the investment will be interpreted in the policy and stakeholder context.

The upgraded capabilities in greenhouse gas research are also linked from the outset to impact and policy. The new investments build on existing BEIS-supported research using tall-tower telecoms towers and GAW observatories to directly estimate top-down UK GHG emissions. The UK is one of only two countries in the world to use this highly advanced approach to validate inventory estimates of national emissions, in support of the Paris climate agreement. The new measurements generated here will operate alongside ongoing BEIS research and use those existing academic - government relationships and mechanisms, including also with the Met Office and NPL, to generate new impact arising from more detailed speciated measurements of long-lived gases.

The NERC investment in transport emissions detection capacities will create a new relationship between NCAS, University of York and the Department for Transport for impact, and strengthen existing impact routes through Ricardo plc, the engineering consultancy that produces the UK's emissions inventories. New routes to impact with DfT are being actively developed including DfT co-funding for research staff and PhD students.

The broader strategic evidential value of the urban pollution and greenhouse gas data, and new science, will be used at a high level in government including the cross-departmental Air Quality Leadership Group of which Lewis is a member.

Whilst much of the impact is envisaged to arise through the provision of new insight that informs local and national policy decisions, there is also a major route to impact through international engagement. The atmospheric data will also form part of national reporting from the UK to UNFCCC, to WMO and to UNEP and the partners have multiple existing relationships and routes to influence through scientific advisory activities, expert groups and assessments such as IPCC, UNEP GEO-5 and WMO/UNEP ozone assessment.