European exchange of monitoring information and state of the air quality in 2010 ETC/ACM Technical Paper 2012/1

Summary
Current EU air quality legislation, Council Decision (97/101/EC), requires the European Commission to prepare yearly a technical report on the meta information and air quality data that have been exchanged among the EU Member States and the Commission. Besides, the member and collaborating countries of the European Environment Agency, which include EU (potential) candidate countries and EFTA states, have agreed to follow this reporting procedure as well. All this information is made available in the AirBase database. This technical report provides an overview of the reporting cycle on the data for 2010.

A total of 38 countries, including the 27 EU MS, have provided air quality data for 2010. As in preceding years, a large number of time series have been transmitted, covering, for example, sulphur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM₁₀, PM_2.5), ozone (O₃), carbon monoxide (CO) and benzene (C₆H₆).
Increased submission took place on Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Heavy Metals (HM's) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs).
Nearly all the countries that updated their meta information used the Air Quality Data Exchange Module (AQ-DEM). This data transfer tool was made available specifically for this purpose by the ETC/ACM. Intensive feedback took place with the data suppliers on their submitted data.

Related: This technical report only describes the meta information and the quality of the measurement data for 2010. The state of the European air quality in 2010 for some selected pollutants is demonstrated in ETC/ACM Technical Paper 2012/4. (Later in 2012 a more extensive analysis will be provided in a EEA report Air Quality in Europe 2012).

Prepared by: Wim Mol, Patrick van Hooydonk (RIVM, ETC/ACM partner)

Published by: ETC/ACM, Bilthoven, NL, June 2012, 77 pp.

Downloads for separate table, graph and map files as included in the report