Representatives of the EMERGE Consortium participated in the Air Quality Conference 2020 which was co-organized by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and University of Hertfordshire and was held online (https://lnkd.in/eMifFBz) between May 18-26, 2020. Despite the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, the conference managed to attract the interest of many air quality modelling and measurement teams in the EU and internationally.
A special session on Shipping and Air Quality was held where the impacts of shipping on air pollution were discussed and the EMERGE project was presented.
Overall, the participants identified a number of challenges that still need to be addressed to improve our understanding of shipping contribution to pollution and in improving our modelling tools to better quantify this contribution. Specific focus was given on port emissions and the need to improve our emission factors and the activity profile of ships, together with our methods to simulate vertical plume rise and in-plume chemistry. These are all areas that the EMERGE project wishes to contribute to.
