This review provides a community's perspective on air quality research focusing mainly on developments over the past decade. The article provides perspectives on current and future challenges as well as research needs for selected key topics. While this paper is not an exhaustive review of all research areas in the field of air quality, we have selected key topics that we feel are important from air quality research and policy perspectives. After providing a short historical overview, this review focuses on improvements in characterizing sources and emissions of air pollution, new air quality observations and instrumentation, advances in air quality prediction and forecasting, understanding interactions of air quality with meteorology and climate, exposure and health assessment, and air quality management and policy. In conducting the review, specific objectives were (i) to address current developments that push the boundaries of air quality research forward, (ii) to highlight the emerging prominent gaps of knowledge in air quality research, and (iii) to make recommendations to guide the direction for future research within the wider community. This review also identifies areas of particular importance for air quality policy. The original concept of this review was borne at the International Conference on Air Quality 2020 (held online due to the COVID 19 restrictions during 18–26 May 2020), but the article incorporates a wider landscape of research literature within the field of air quality science. On air pollution emissions the review highlights, in particular, the need to reduce uncertainties in emissions from diffuse sources, particulate matter chemical components, shipping emissions, and the importance of considering both indoor and outdoor sources. There is a growing need to have integrated air pollution and related observations from both ground-based and remote sensing instruments, including in particular those on satellites. The research should also capitalize on the growing area of low-cost sensors, while ensuring a quality of the measurements which are regulated by guidelines. Connecting various physical scales in air quality modelling is still a continual issue, with cities being affected by air pollution gradients at local scales and by long-range transport. At the same time, one should allow for the impacts from climate change on a longer timescale. Earth system modelling offers considerable potential by providing a consistent framework for treating scales and processes, especially where there are significant feedbacks, such as those related to aerosols, chemistry, and meteorology. Assessment of exposure to air pollution should consider the impacts of both indoor and outdoor emissions, as well as application of more sophisticated, dynamic modelling approaches to predict concentrations of air pollutants in both environments. With particulate matter being one of the most important pollutants for health, research is indicating the urgent need to understand, in particular, the role of particle number and chemical components in terms of health impact, which in turn requires improved emission inventories and models for predicting high-resolution distributions of these metrics over cities. The review also examines how air pollution management needs to adapt to the above-mentioned new challenges and briefly considers the implications from the COVID-19 pandemic for air quality. Finally, we provide recommendations for air quality research and support for policy.

In this paper emission factors (EFs) for particulate matter (PM) and some sub-components as well as gaseous substances were investigated in two onboard measurement campaigns. Emissions from two 4-stroke main engines were measured under stable-load conditions. The impact of varying engine load on the emissions was investigated on one of the engines, and the impact of fuel quality on the other, where heavy fuel oil (HFO) with sulphur content 1% and 0.5% and marine gas oil (MGO) with sulphur content 0.1% were used. Furthermore, emissions from one auxiliary engine were studied. The measured EFs for PM mass were in the range of 0.3 to 2.7 g kg⁻¹ fuel with the lowest values for emissions from the combustion of MGO, and the highest values for HFO with a sulphur content of 1%. The PM mass size distribution was dominated by particles in accumulation mode. Emission factors for particle numbers EF(PN) in the range of 5 × 10¹⁵–1 × 10¹⁷ # kg⁻¹ fuel were found, the number concentration was dominated by particles in the ultrafine mode and ca. 2/3 of the particle number were non-volatile. The most abundant component of the PM mass was organic carbon, making up 25–60% of the PM. The measured EFs for organic carbon (OC) were 0.6 g kg⁻¹ fuel for HFO and 0.2 g kg⁻¹ fuel for MGO. Elemental carbon (EC) made up 10–38% of the PM mass, with no significant differences between HFO and MGO fuels. The concentrations of metals on sampled filters were investigated with energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and the detected metal elements in exhaust when using HFO was concluded to originate from both the fuel (V, Ni, Fe) and the lubricant (Ca, Zn), while for the case of MGO combustion, most of the metals were concluded to originate from the lubricants. The measured emission factors for sulphate particles, EF (SO²⁻₄), were low, ca. 0.1–0.2 g kg⁻¹ fuel for HFO with 1% sulphur, 0.07–0.09 g kg⁻¹ fuel for HFO with 0.5% sulphur and 0.003–0.006 g kg⁻¹ fuel for MGO. This corresponds to 0.1–0.8% and 0.1–0.6% of fuel S converted to PM sulphate for HFO and MGO, respectively. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images of the collected PM showed three different types of particles: relatively pure soot; char and char-mineral particles; and amorphous, probably organic particles containing inorganic impurities. The maps of elements obtained from STEM showed a heterogeneous composition of primary soot particles with respect to the trace metals and sulphur. Temperature-programmed oxidation (TPO) of PM showed higher soot oxidation reactivity compared to automotive diesel soot, PM from the HFO exhaust being more reactive than PM from the MGO exhaust. Oxidative potential measured as the rate of consumption of Dithiothreitol (DTT) was for the first time measured on PM from ship exhaust. The obtained values were between 0.01 and 0.04 nmol DTT min⁻¹ μg⁻¹ PM, which is quite similar to oxidative potentials of PM collected at urban and traffic sites. The data obtained during the experiments add information about emission factors for both gaseous and PM-bound compounds from ship engines using different fuels and under different engine-load conditions. Observed variability of the EFs illustrates uncertainties of these emission factors as a result of influences from fuel and lubricant composition, from differences between individual engines and from the differences in sampling conditions.

There is an increase in installations of exhaust gas scrubbers on ships following international regulations on sulphur content in marine fuel from 2020. We have conducted emission measurements on a four-stroke marine engine using low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) and heavy fuel oil (HFO) at different steady state engine loads. For the HFO the exhaust was probed upstream and downstream of an exhaust gas scrubber. While sulphur dioxide was removed with high efficiency in the scrubber, the measurements of particle emissions indicate lower emissions at the use of LSFO than downstream of the scrubber. The scrubber removes between 32% and 43% of the particle mass from the exhaust at the HFO tests upstream and downstream of the scrubber, but levels equivalent to those in LSFO exhaust are not reached. Decreases in the emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH-16) and particulate matter as black carbon, organic carbon and elemental carbon, over the scrubber were observed for a majority of the trials, although emissions at LSFO use were consistently lower at comparable engine power.

This paper describes the new developments of the Ship Traffic Emission Assessment Model (STEAM) which enable the modelling of pollutant discharges to water from ships. These include nutrients from black/grey water discharges as well as from food waste. Further, the modelling of contaminants in ballast, black, grey and scrubber water, bilge discharges, and stern tube oil leaks are also described as well as releases of contaminants from antifouling paints. Each of the discharges is regulated by different sections of the IMO MARPOL convention, and emission patterns of different pollution releases vary significantly. The discharge patterns and total amounts for the year 2012 in the Baltic Sea area are reported and open-loop SO_x scrubbing effluent was found to be the second-largest pollutant stream by volume. The scrubber discharges have increased significantly in recent years, and their environmental impacts need to be investigated in detail.

Ship emissions in and around ports are of interest for urban air quality management in many harbour cities. We investigated the impact of regional and local ship emissions on urban air quality for 2012 conditions in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, the largest cargo port in Scandinavia. In order to assess the effects of ship emissions, a coupled regional- and local-scale model system has been set up using ship emissions in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea as well as in and around the port of Gothenburg. Ship emissions were calculated with the Ship Traffic Emission Assessment Model (STEAM), taking into account individual vessel characteristics and vessel activity data. The calculated contributions from local and regional shipping to local air pollution in Gothenburg were found to be substantial, especially in areas around the city ports. The relative contribution from local shipping to annual mean NO₂ concentrations was 14 % as the model domain average, while the relative contribution from regional shipping in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea was 26 %. In an area close to the city terminals, the contribution of NO₂ from local shipping (33 %) was higher than that of road traffic (28 %), which indicates the importance of controlling local shipping emissions. Local shipping emissions of NO_x led to a decrease in the summer mean O₃ levels in the city by 0.5 ppb (∼2 %) on average. Regional shipping led to a slight increase in O₃ concentrations; however, the overall effect of regional and the local shipping together was a small decrease in the summer mean O₃ concentrations in the city. In addition, volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from local shipping compensate up to 4 ppb of the decrease in summer O₃ concentrations due to the NO titration effect. For particulate matter with a median aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 µm (PM_2.5), local ship emissions contributed only 3 % to the annual mean in the model domain, while regional shipping under 2012 conditions was a larger contributor, with an annual mean contribution of 11 % of the city domain average. Based on the modelled local and regional shipping contributions, the health effects of PM_2.5, NO₂ and ozone were assessed using the ALPHA-RiskPoll (ARP) model. An effect of the shipping-associated PM_2.5 exposure in the modelled area was a mean decrease in the life expectancy by 0.015 years per person. The relative contribution of local shipping to the impact of total PM_2.5 was 2.2 %, which can be compared to the 5.3 % contribution from local road traffic. The relative contribution of the regional shipping was 10.3 %. The mortalities due to the exposure to NO₂ associated with shipping were calculated to be 2.6 premature deaths yr⁻¹. The relative contribution of local and regional shipping to the total exposure to NO₂ in the reference simulation was 14 % and 21 %, respectively. The shipping-related ozone exposures were due to the NO titration effect leading to a negative number of premature deaths. Our study shows that overall health impacts of regional shipping can be more significant than those of local shipping, emphasizing that abatement policy options on city-scale air pollution require close cooperation across governance levels. Our findings indicate that the strengthened Sulphur Emission Control Areas (SECAs) fuel sulphur limit from 1 % to 0.1 % in 2015, leading to a strong decrease in the formation of secondary particulate matter on a regional scale was an important step in improving the air quality in the city.

We investigated the distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on individual ambient aerosol particles at the Swedish western coast in a pristine environment for 10 d in October 2019. The measurements were carried out using new technology with single-particle mass spectrometry (SPMS) that reveals both the inorganic particle composition as well as the particle-bound PAHs (Schade et al., 2019). More than 290 000 particles were characterized; 4412 of them reveal PAH signatures. Most of the PAH-containing particles were internal mixtures of carbonaceous material, secondary nitrate and metals from distant sources in central and eastern Europe. We characterize the aerosol with respect to the inorganic composition, comparable to conventional SPMS, before we discuss the distribution of PAHs within this particle ensemble. Vice versa, we analyze the single-particle PAH spectra for characteristic patterns and discuss the inorganic composition, origin and atmospheric processing of the respective particles. The study period comprised different meteorological situations: clean air conditions with winds from the North Sea/Kattegat and little terrestrial air pollution, long-range transport from eastern Europe and southern Sweden, and transport of aerosols from central Europe over the sea. For all meteorological conditions, PAHs were detected in particles whose inorganic content indicates traffic emissions, such as combinations of soot, iron and calcium as well as in particles with biomass-burning signatures. However, there were variations in their amounts, dependent on the geographic origin. Because of strong mixing, rapid degradation and speciation limits, e.g., for PAHs of the same nominal mass, the application of diagnostic ratios for source apportionment is limited under the conditions of our study. Nevertheless, the combination with the inorganic content and meteorological data provides unique insights into the particles' origin, aging and mixing state. We exemplarily show how the observation of PAH profiles and inorganic secondary components on a single-particle level can open a new door to investigate aerosol aging processes. To our best knowledge, we herewith present the first comprehensive study on the single-particle distribution of PAHs in ambient air as well as the first set of combined data on PAHs and inorganic composition on a single-particle level.