Anthropogenic activities emissions

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, sometimes also called polynuclear aromatics, PNA) are a hazardous class of widespread pollutants. The parent structures of the common PAHs are shown in Fig. 4 and the alkylated homologs are generally minor in combustion emissions. PAHs are produced by all natural combustion processes (e.g., wild fires) and from anthropogenic activity such as fossil fuels combustion, biomass burning, chemical manufacturing, petroleum refining, metallurgical processes, coal utilization, tar production, etc. [6,9,15,18, 20,24,131-139]. 

The first major link between the indirect effects of aerosol particles and climate is whether there has been an increase in particles and in CCN due to anthropogenic activities. As discussed in Chapter 2, anthropogenic emissions of particles and of gas-phase precursors to particles such as S02 have clearly increased since preindustrial times, and it is reasonable that CCN have also increased. Ice core data provide a record of some of the species that can act as CCN. Not surprisingly, sulfate and nitrate in the ice cores have increased substantially over the past century (Mayewski et al., 1986, 1990 Laj et al., 1992 Fischer et al., 1998). For example, Figure 14.43 shows the increases in sulfate and nitrate since preindustrial times in an ice core in central Greenland (Laj et al., 1992). Sulfate has increased by 300% and nitrate by 200%. This suggests that sulfate and nitrate CCN also increased, although not necessarily in direct proportion to the concentrations in the ice core measurements. 

The emission of C02 from anthropogenic activities (the combustion of C-based fossil fuels, deforestation, combustion of woods) amounts to approximately 7.5 Gtc per year, or about 3.5% of the total amount cycled in the natural cycle. However, as the natural systems are unable to use such C02, this leads to its accumulation into the atmosphere. The assumption that an increase of the concentration of C02 in the atmosphere would have boosted both the photosynthesis and the dissolution into the oceans has not been proven to be true. In fact, the solubility of C02 is governed by complex equilibria, while photosynthetic fixation is limited by several factors so that, under the increase of the atmospheric concentration from 280 ppm of the preindustrial era to the present-day 380 ppm, there has not been any sensible improvement of the uptake. Therefore, under natural conditions the uptake of C02 has reached an equilibrium state, and the further increase in atmospheric concentrations may more likely cause climate changes through the greenhouse effect and destabilization of the thermal structure of the atmosphere, than improve the elimination of C02 from the atmosphere. 

A further source of variability which interferes with natural variability is the influence of anthropogenic activities. Tab. 1-2 shows the highest and the lowest values of some selected heavy metals measured in the surface soil of an area strongly influenced by particulate emissions from a large metallurgical factory. The variability amounts to an order of magnitude of between 1 and 2. 

Emissions of dust are crucial sources of pollution of the atmosphere by anthropogenic activities. The impact of emissions on territories is essentially determined by the amount of sedimented airborne particulate matter [KOMMISSION FUR UMWELTSCHUTZ, 1976]. In routine monitoring the assessment of these loadings is usually conducted by determining the total sedimented airborne particulates (TSP) in monitoring raster screens and comparison with legally fixed thresholds. Commonly, the positions of the dust-sam-... 

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