Knowledge on atmospheric emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases is essential to addressing societal challenges across a variety of disciplines ranging from the transport of air pollution, impact on human health, protection of the environment, to energy and climate policy.
Emission sources need to be understood in detail to mitigate climate change and design clean air cities. The abatement of emissions relies on specific knowledge on the activity that results in emissions, technological shifts over time and details on where and when emissions occur.
NILU constantly develops and uses innovative methods and models to acquire new knowledge about emissions from urban and industrial sources, and support authorities on the reporting obligations (e.g., CLRTAP-Convention of Long-Range Transport of Air pollution, UNFCCC – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Our work includes emissions of greenhouse gases, traditional air pollutant and new compounds that pollute the air and contribute to climate change.
Our work includes new emission inventory developments, assessment of emissions by use of atmospheric observations, top-down vs bottom-up comparisons and uncertainty analysis. We develop unique methods for particular locations, spatio-temporal scales and sectors, as well as novel uses of input data.
Visualization of emissions
The EMISYS visualization platform shows some of NILU’s emission work and it is frequently updated with new results. It supports research, policy making and public awareness of how different activities (travelling, heating) result in emissions that threaten our environment.
The emission research team
The emission research team works at the department of Urban Environment and Industry and the members are:
- Susana Lopez-Aparicio, Senior Scientist and head of emission group.
- Henrik Grythe, Scientist, emission modelling and development of new methods for quantifying emissions of both climate gases and air pollutant on a high temporal and spatial resolution.
- Dam Thanh Vo, Scientist, regional and local emission inventories, and visualization of model results using GIS application.
- Torleif Weydahl, Scientist, air quality assessment for municipalities and assessment of industrial and traffic emissions.
- Matthias Vogt, Scientist, exhaust and non-exhaust emissions from traffic.