Quantification of the airport-related pollution under wintertime anticyclonic conditions from idealized large-eddy simulations

Airport-related pollution is quantified using an idealized numerical environment. 14-hour large-eddy simulations are run over a fictitious but representative regional airport under an academic wintertime anticyclonic situation with the atmospheric model Meso-NH. A simplified photo-chemical module is used and the model is coupled with an emission inventory providing realistic traffic conditions over a 0600–2000 UTC cycle. The emission inventory only includes aircraft related pollutants sources allowing us to isolate and quantify their contribution to local pollution. Two simulations are run in order to characterize the fine scale spatio-temporal evolution of the plume under simple and double traffic activity. Starting from an idealized quiescent and clean atmosphere, the NO2 concentrations reached over the platform range from 101 to 104 μg m−3. The air quality standards are transgressed near the emissions sources and over a large portion of the platform when the atmosphere is stably stratified. On a larger-scale, the airport-related emissions contribute to NO2 levels up to at least 50 μg m−3 over several square kilometers. The size of the areas affected by the plume is very sensitive to the traffic activity and grows at a rate which is higher than the activity increase itself. Conversely, a twofold augmentation of the traffic results in a less than twofold NO2 concentrations increase because of the non-linearity of the photo-chemical activity. Future contributions could be conducted with a more realistic configuration in order to quantify the interactions between this airport-related plume and the surrounding emissions.