Despite a growing recognition at international level on the importance related to the air pollution and air quality problems, assessment of the air pollution patterns in Romania remains very scarce. For the north-eastern Romania, (i.e. Iasi urban area), there are some publications and scientific contributions at various conferences of Arsene and co-workers group. However, in most of the reports it is clearly shown that pollution phenomena occur in Iasi in terms of both chemical species present in fine and coarse particles but also in wet deposition. Moreover, the treatment of aerosols is particularly still very challenging because of their many sources (e.g., soil erosion, sea spray, biogenic emission, volcano eruptions, soot from combustion, condensation of precursor gases, other anthropogenic sources) and because of their complex interactions with different other components of the atmospheric systems. For these reasons the role of aerosols in the atmospheric system is considered as being not yet sufficiently well understood. Presently, sources, distribution and behavior of natural and anthropogenic aerosols are still subjects of much scientific debates even in research groups with a relatively well understanding of the interest matters.
AI-FORECAST project is meant to address some of the most important challenges in the European Union’s 7th Environment Action Programme where the EU 2020-2050 vision covers aspects as climate change and societal challenges related to human-well beings. Since air pollution at a global level continues to harm people’s/environment health, significant work is still needed to fill the knowledge gaps and to coordinate mitigation approaches in many world-wide areas where such actions are lacking. Iasi urban area (north-eastern Romania) seems to be very critical in this regard since, for this site, the European Environment Agency reported for 2013 exceedances of the fine and coarse particulate fractions (called also aerosols; air pollutants) daily limit values. Despite important efforts, a significant part of the aerosols mass concentration (in Iasi) is not yet identified and this is susceptible to bring large uncertainties in all future approaches related to the interest subjects. To complete the important issue related to the aerosols mass closure the main objective of the AI-FORECAST is to provide for the first time a suitable and appropriate context to fulfil the requirements of accurately answering the constrains of the current challenges and uncertainties concerning the complex molecular organic structures of urban fine aerosols also at this very eastern site of the EU (i.e. in Iasi area). To achieve the overall goal and to ensure AI-FORECAST sustainability the project is addressing all this through 2 general objectives: i) performing a complete chemical characterisation for the organic fraction in fine aerosols to aid value in the mass closure balance (e.g. the fraction residing in the 381 nm range has a missing mass of ~45% from the total), and ii) undertaking of an appropriate source apportionment in order to identify the role of the biogenic and anthropogenic sources contribution to the urban atmospheric background burden of organics in fine aerosols in Iasi area.
Size Resolved Aerosols, Organic Compounds, Chemical Composition, Atmospheric Pollution, Atmospheric Chemistry