Relationships between emission sources and excess ozone concentrations

While the ozone layer in the stratosphere is shielding the Earthʹs surface from radioactivity, high ozone concentrations in the troposphere have damaging effects on plants, animals and humans when they exceed certain critical levels. This is why it is necessary to resolve successfully three tasks: 1. (i) to determine in a sufficiently accurate way, the critical levels of the ozone concentrations, 2. (ii) to reduce the ozone concentrations to the critical levels, and 3. (iii) to develop reliable and robust control strategies by which the ozone concentrations can be kept under the critical levels. Both the second task and the third task are very expensive. Therefore, the high ozone concentrations must be reduced to the critical levels, but no more. Furthermore, it is necessary to reduce (as much as possible) the economical costs of these actions. Mathematical models can be used in the search of an optimal solution of the tasks listed above. A mathematical model for studying air pollution levels in Europe (the Danish Eulerian Model) will be shortly discussed. The model consists of a system of 35 partial differential equations and leads to huge computational tasks, when it is handled numerically. Therefore, it is necessary to use big modern high-speed computers (with vector and/or parallel capabilities). The Danish Eulerian Model has been used to run various scenarios in order to study some of the relationships between emission sources in Europe and high ozone concentrations. Modern visualization techniques have been applied to illustrate better the effects of different emission reductions used in the scenarios on the ozone concentrations and to draw some conclusions.