Alexandre Armengaud

• Head of Scientific and International Cooperation at ATMOSUD ; Air Quality Observatory in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region (PACA region)

Long-term measurements of VOC concentrations are crucial to improve our knowledge about their role in atmospheric chemistry, especially in region with high photochemistry such as the Mediterranean Basin. A field measurement campaign of 18 months has been conducted in Marseille from March 2019 to August 2020 with online measurement of C2 to C16 NMHC...

As atmospheric CO2 emissions and the trend of urbanization both increase, the ability to accurately assess the CO2 budget from urban environments becomes more important for effective CO2 mitigation efforts. This task can be difficult for complex areas such as the urban–coastal Mediterranean region near Marseille, France, which contains the second m...

A summertime field campaign was conducted in Marseille, one of the major cruise and ferry ports in the Mediterranean to provide comprehensive analysis of in-port ship emissions. High-temporal-resolution data were simultaneously collected from two monitoring stations deployed in port area to examine the composition in both gas and particulate phases...

In air quality modeling, fine-scale daily mapping is generally calculated from dispersion models involving multiple parameters linked in particular to emissions, which require regular updating and a long computation time. The aim of this work is to provide a simpler model, easily adaptable to other regions and capable of estimating nitrogen dioxide...

The Mediterranean basin is one of many regions worldwide where elevated concentrations of air pollutants have been frequently reported. It is also one of the global tropospheric ozone hot spots, especially during the summer months. A short overview on Mediterranean ozone, based mainly on surface ozone data, is presented. Furthermore, aspects of atm...

Marseille (France) is a city on the Mediterranean coast characterized by two specific wind patterns: mistral (northwesterly wind blowing above 10 m/s) and sea/land breezes (southwesterly wind during daytime/northeasterly wind during the nighttime, blowing below 6 m/s). For the first time, this study investigates the diurnal and seasonal variability...

This study presents the first analysis of the variability of atmospheric CO2 in the area of the Marseille city (France). It addresses the role of anthropogenic emissions, natural fluxes and atmospheric boundary layer height (ABLH) dynamics on CO2 variability at the diurnal, synoptic, seasonal and multi-annual scales. A regional network based on 4 i...

Background While air pollution is a major issue due to its harmful effects on human health, few studies focus on its impact on the immune system and vulnerability to viral infections. The lockdown declared following the COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to study the large-scale impact of variations in air pollutants in real life. W...

Coastal areas, densely populated in France, are particularly impacted by shipping. In 2020, regulations for emissions in the Mediterranean Sea came into effect with the limitation of fuel sulfur content (0.5%). In this context, AtmoSud is involved in different projects to improve its understanding of atmospheric pollution.

Presentation on how the air quality model CHIMERE could be applied to the determination of the atmospheric concentrations of pesticides.

Introduction Air pollution exposure is suspected to alter both the incidence and mortality in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The impact of chronic air pollutant exposure on the incidence and mortality of ARDS from various aetiologies in Europe remains unknown. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the incidence of ARDS in a...

Since 2014, a 100 m tall tower measures continuously greenhouse gases at the Observatoire de haute Provence (OHP) located in the southeast of France (43° 55′ 51″ N, 5° 42′ 48″ E) as a monitoring station of the French National Greenhouse Gases Observation network (ICOS-Fr). This rural station allows to study the short, mid, and long terms variabilit...

A module to simulate the volatilization of pesticides from soils and plants was implemented in the air quality model CHIMERE in order to simulate spatiotemporal distribution of pesticide atmospheric concentrations. Pesticide applications are spatially distributed according to the quantities of pesticides sold per municipality in France (recorded in...

A carbonate chemistry balance module was implemented into a biogeochemical model of the planktonic food web. The model, named Eco3M-CarbOx, includes 22 state variables that are dispatched into 5 compartments: phytoplankton, heterotrophic bacteria, detrital particulate organic matter, labile dissolved organic, and inorganic matter. This model is app...

Mobile devices for city-scale air quality monitoring is receiving increasing attention due to the advent of low-cost and miniaturized sensors. Mobility and crowdsensing have emerged as a new means to investigate the ambient air quality in urban areas. However, the design of the network (e.g., number of sensors per unit area) and the scientific inte...

Tropospheric ozone is a strong oxidant which affects human health, agricultural yields as well as ecosystems functioning. Thus, it is very important to understand what factors determine ozone formation in order to control air pollution. It is well known that isoprene participates in ozone formation. In this study, we assess the potential impact of...

Abstract. The Bay of Marseille (BoM, France) is impacted by the urbanized and industrialized Aix-Marseille Metropolis, which is subject to significant increases in anthropogenic emissions of CO₂. A carbonate chemistry balance module has been implemented into a biogeochemical model of the planktonic food web. The resulting model, named Ec...

BrC and levoglucosan datasets at various French urban sites during winter 2014-15

The temporal evolution of the carbonate system and air-sea CO2 fluxes are investigated for the first time in the Bay of Marseille (BoM – North Western Mediterranean Sea), a coastal system affected by anthropogenic forcing from the Marseille metropolis. This study presents a two-year time-series (between 2016 and 2018) of fortnightly measurements of...

Glyphosate, AMPA, its main metabolite, and Glufosinate-ammonium were monitored in ambient air samples collected for two years (2015–2016), at four sampling sites in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur Region (PACA, France) in different areas typologies (non-agricultural areas: city center, ‘zero pesticide’ policy, and industrial area but also agricultural s...

Impacted by a complex mixture of urban, industrial, shipping and also natural emissions, Marseille, the second most populated city in France, represents a very interesting case study for the apportionment of PM2.5 sources in a Mediterranean urban environment. In this study, daily PM2.5 samples were collected over a one-year period (2011−2012) at an...

A total of 59 current-use pesticides were monitored in ambient air samples collected from February 2012 to December 2017, at two rural and six urban sites in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur Region and Corsica, France. 45 of searched active substances were detected at least in one sample, at frequencies ranging from 0.1 to 98.6%. Among the most frequentl...

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emitted by plants represent a large source of carbon compounds released into the atmosphere, where they account for precursors of tropospheric ozone and secondary organic aerosols. Being directly involved in air pollution and indirectly in climate change, understanding what factors drive BVOC emissions is...

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) emitted by plants are a large source of carbon compounds released into the atmosphere where they are precursors of ozone and secondary organic aerosols. Being directly involved in air pollution and indirectly in climate change, it is very important to understand what factors drive the BVOC emissions in ord...

Cross-border regions of Franco-Italian space ALCOTRA (Liguria, Piedmont, PACA, Rhône-Alpes and Aosta Valley) are all faced with a deteriorated air quality. Faced with this major health issue that concerns 17 millions people, these regions have chosen to unite under the AERA project to find solutions together. This project was intended to harmonize...

Marseille is the second most populated city in France with more than one million inhabitants. With traffic of about 88 million tons (Mt) in 2011, Marseille is also the most important port of the Mediterranean Sea, and also in the vicinity of the large petrochemical and industrial area of Fos-Berre, located 40 km northwest of the metropolitan area....

International@AIR+BDA:CGO:ABO

Marseille, the most important port of the Mediterranean Sea, represents a challenging case study for source apportionment exercises, combining an active photochemistry and multiple emission sources, including fugitive emissions from industrial sources and shipping. This paper presents a Chemical Mass Balance (CMB) approach based on organic markers...

A comprehensive aerosol characterization was conducted at Marseille during summer, including organic (OC) and elemental carbon (EC), major ionic species, radiocarbon (14C), water-soluble OC and HULIS (HUmic LIke Substances), elemental composition and primary and secondary organic markers. This paper is the second paper of a two-part series that use...

Marseille, the most important port of the Mediterranean Sea, represents a challenging case study for source apportionment exercises, combining an active photochemistry and multiple emission sources, including fugitive emissions from industrial sources and shipping. This paper presents a Chemical Mass Balance (CMB) approach based on organic markers...

A comprehensive aerosol characterization was conducted at Marseille during summer, including organic (OC) and elemental carbon (EC), major ionic species, radiocarbon (¹⁴C), water soluble OC and HULIS (HUmic LIke Substances), elemental composition and primary and secondary organic markers. This paper is the second paper of a two-part seri...

Due to its adverse effects on human health, atmospheric particulate matter (PM) constitutes a growing challenge for air quality management. It is also a complex subject of study. The understanding of its atmospheric evolution is indeed made difficult by the wide number of sources and the numerous processes that govern its evolution in the troposphe...

At the onset of the 2010 statutory deadline for the respect of the European National Emission Ceiling directive, two questions arise. Will the engaged regulations for the respect of ozone air quality thresholds be fully efficient on the most polluted regions? How can we design the continuation of ozone control in those areas? This study is based on...

The purpose of this work was to estimate exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TAP), of the 6683 schoolchildren included in a cross-sectional epidemiological study conducted in six French cities to determine the effects of urban air pollution (AP) on respiratory and allergic health.Annual mean concentrations of benzene, CO, NO2, NOx, PM10 and...

In the context of advection of trace species by 3D atmospheric flows, a comparative test of a hierarchy of finite volume transport schemes initially derived by B. Van Leer is presented. Those schemes are conservative by construction and Van Leer proposed a simple way of ensuring monotonicity. One of the schemes, introduced independently in the atmo...

The uplift, transport and deposition of dust have been implemented in the LMDz AGCM. Simulations of atmospheric dust transport have been performed under present day (PD) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) conditions. For the PD climate the large-scale atmospheric dust transport as inferred from atmospheric measurements is reproduced. Increased dust amo...

A simple Rayleigh-type isotope model, typical of those used to develop algorithms for extracting climatic information from stable water isotope paleodata, is evaluated against the more complex and presumably more reliable calculations of a general circulation model (GCM) fitted with isotope tracer diagnostics. The evaluation centers on an analysis...

Global measurements of the annual mean HDO and H218O concentrations in modern precipitation show that these water isotope concentrations are linearly related to the annual mean temperature at the precipitation site in middle and high latitudes. Palaeoclimatologists have used this relationship to infer palaeotemperatures from the isotope palaeodata...

The global distribution of atmospheric constituents (wether major or minor species, gas or aerosol, or even energy and momentum) is determined by the distribution of the sources, sinks, and conversion within the atmosphere, and by transport and mixing by the atmospheric circulation. General circulation models (GCMs) simulate, on a global scale, the...

Radon 222 (Rn-222) is used as a tracer to probe and intercompare transport, turbulent mixing, and convective mixing in the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD) and Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs). Formulations for tracer transport and mixing and their control on the global distribution...

Simulation results from two global atmospheric tracer/climate models in the interior of the two major ice sheets at high northern and southern latitudes are presented and discussed. The models are based on two existing general circulation models (GCMs) of the atmosphere, complemented with tracer formulations (sources, transport, mixing, deposition,...

A simple Rayleigh-type isotope model, typical of those used to develop algorithms for extracting climatic information from stable water isotope paleodata, is evaluated against the more complex and presumably more reliable calculations of a general circulation model (GCM) fitted with isotope tracer diagnostics. The evaluation centers on an analysis...