Yr2 Underspend: Regional-scale influences on Delhi air pollution

Uncertainties in regional exchanges of air pollution can fundamentally undermine confidence in, and the potential effectiveness of, air pollution policies within cities themselves. This project will address key science capability gaps associated with assessing and reducing pollution impacts in Delhi and the wider National Capital Region. This will be achieved through a collaborative UK-India development of new science tools for predicting air pollution at the surface and measuring air pollution emissions and exposure in India.

These ambitious goals will be achieved through an intensive six month coordinated modelling and experimental effort from NCAS in the UK and IITM and IIT in India. The project will accelerate the creation of advanced new science capability in the UK and India, and enhance further the links between the UK and India for the development of airborne measurement technologies.

Air pollution is well established as having major impacts on human well-being, welfare and quality of life in addition to reducing crop yields in many developing countries. Whilst the exact pathways and mechanisms for health effects remain to be established, there is strong evidence to demonstrate that months to years of life can be lost, and with decades of health impairment, through pollution exposure indoors and outside. In developing countries the impacts are disproportionately experienced by the poorest in society, where outdoor pollution is exacerbated further by indoor exposure to poorly ventilated combustion sources. The underlying causes of air pollution are understood; combustion of fossil fuels for electricity, transport, cooking and heating, agricultural emissions, resource extraction, dust and so on. Over the past two centuries economic expansion has been closely tied to transition periods with increased air pollution and negative social and health impacts. A challenge for 21st century development is to create an integrated scientific, regulatory, and technological framework, which enables development in the poorest counties, with improvements in individual prosperity and well-being, but without damaging air pollution as a side effect.
Inability to fully describe the chemistry and physics of the highly polluted urban atmosphere limits society's response in targeting actions and policy to improve health but without undermining development and economic goals. It is unrealistic to attempt to immediately eliminate certain sources of air pollution given current levels of maturity and cost of replacement technologies. Rather, developing economies must be on a pathway with optimized incremental adoption of technologies that maximize air quality improvements in the shortest time possible and with manageable economic costs.

The pathway to this goal is through policies informed by a robust scientific understanding. In air pollution science, understanding is encapsulated in numerical models that attempt to simulate emission of pollutants in time and space, disaggregated by source, the meteorology, and the transformation of chemicals. Such models then provide a means to estimate human exposure and to provide predictions, warnings and pro-active management of urban systems. This proposal is focused at the issue of testing and improving air pollution model processes in Delhi, a location that faces major health and pollution challenges as it grows economically. Confidence in regionally optimised models that fit an appropriate point in the economic and technological cycle of a country are critical and these models must be tested and proven against observations. If they pass this test, they have value for forecasts over timescales relevant to urban planning, economic policy and regulation. This proposal will combine measurements from a range platforms to test air pollution model performance in Delhi.

Robust pollution models are useful only in a development context if they are placed alongside skilled local scientists who can extract value and meaning from their outputs. Such a combination of capabilities is central to enabling successful economic development pathways that minimize air pollution and health impacts whilst speeding the transition to cleaner cities with prospering economies. Our proposal meets these objectives through training and sharing of knowledge and the delivery of improved local capabilities in both measurement and modelling. We focus in particular on the development of local skills in air pollution measurement using low-cost sensor devices and using data from Earth observation. We combine this with training to support the direct measurement of air pollution emissions from particular source types such as power generation, road transport and domestic combustion, and the translation of new science capability for aircraft observations to Indian researchers as they develop their own national infrastructure.