Modeling and Characterization of Air Pollution: Perspectives and Recent Developments with a focus on the Campania Region (Southern Italy)

Abstract

The wide availability of data on air pollutant emissions, the knowledge already achieved on the<br />set of chemical and photochemical reactions in the troposphere, the ability to access real time weather<br />conditions at the local scale that determine the transport and transformation of gases and aerosol, now make it possible to obtain credible and reliable predictions, retrospective analyses and/or future projections on air quality. Political institutions and the scientific community are strongly committed to achieve these<br />objectives.During the last years, a sensible improvement has been achieved both because of the better analysis of physical/chemical phenomena, and software/hardware architecture advancements. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to provide, also in real-time, weather and chemical forecasts at very high resolutions (less than 1 km in the horizontal directions). Some of the achievements and future perspectives on the development scenarios are given, with focus on the results of the Campania region (Southern Italy).