European exchange of monitoring information and state of the air quality in 2005 ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2007/1
05 Sep 2007
Iulian Petchesi
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 flows 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 Acceding 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 2005.
In total 33 countries, including 26 EU Member States, have provided air quality data
for 2005. Luxembourg is the only EU Member State not providing information. As in preceding
years, a large number of time series have been submitted for the Daughter Directive components.
For example, sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2),
nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5), 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/ACC. Intensive feedback took
place with the data suppliers on their submitted data.
Previous technical reports focused on the meta information and the quality of the measurement data.
This report will, in addition to more technical aspects of the data submission process and the feedback results,
briefly describe the state of the air quality for some selected pollutants.
Prepared by: WJA Mol, PR van Hooydonk and FAAM de Leeuw (ETC/ACC)
Published by: ETC/ACC, Bilthoven, NL, September 2007, 53 pp.
