RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EMISSION SOURCES AND EXCESS OZONE CONCENTRATIONS

While the ozone layer in the stratosphere is shielding the Earth's sur face from radioactivity, high ozone concentrations in the troposphere have damaging effects on plants, animals and humans when they exceed c ertain critical levels. This is why it is necessary to resolve success fully three tasks: (i) to determine in a sufficiently accurate way, th e critical levels of the ozone concentrations, (ii) to reduce the ozon e concentrations to the critical levels, and (iii) to develop reliable and robust control strategies by which the ozone concentrations can b e kept under the critical levels. Both the second task and the third t ask are very expensive. Therefore, the high ozone concentrations must be reduced to the critical levels, but no more. Furthermore, it is nec essary to reduce (as much as possible) the economical costs of these a ctions. Mathematical models can be used in the search of an optimal so lution of the tasks listed above. A mathematical model for studying ai r pollution levels in Europe (the Danish Eulerian Model) will be short ly discussed. The model consists of a system of 35 partial differentia l equations and leads to huge computational tasks, when it is handled numerically. Therefore, it is necessary to use big modern high-speed c omputers (with vector and/or parallel capabilities). The Danish Euleri an Model has been used to run various scenarios in order to study some of the relationships between emission sources in Europe and high ozon e concentrations. Modern visualization techniques have been applied to illustrate better the effects of different emission reductions used i n the scenarios on the ozone concentrations and to draw some conclusio ns.