Advanced UK Observing Network For Air Quality, Public Heath and Greenhouse Gas Research

排放到大气中的气体和颗粒物在不同的地理尺度上都会产生深远的影响，从局部到个人，再到全球气候系统。空气污染物包括影响人类健康和破坏生态系统的短命物种，以及影响气候过程和平流层臭氧的长寿气体。与测量有关的重大科学不确定性包括：1)空气污染对公众健康的排放、变化和影响；2)温室气体的自然和人为预算；3)消耗臭氧化学品性质的变化。这是一门具有全球意义的科学，但与英国有着直接而紧迫的相关性。目前，科学差距限制了降低污染和生态系统破坏造成的国家健康成本的努力的有效性，并在提供具有成本效益的温室气体减排和支持平流层臭氧恢复的行业行动方面造成了重大不确定性。英国需要对变革性和开放获取的研究基础设施进行新的资本投资，以支持在大气科学领域处于世界领先地位的科学研究，并作为共同利益向政府提供关键证据。这项投资将为英国改善城市空气质量的努力提供直接证据，包括污染成分、趋势以及行动将在哪里有效。因此，它将提高英国实现欧洲和国家人类污染暴露目标、臭氧生态系统暴露目标、国家排放上限指令和跨境哥德堡议定书的能力。它将提供有关国家温室气体排放的独特高精度信息，这些信息将表明英国承诺并遵守其在《气候变化法》中设定的具有法律约束力的目标，以及英国通过联合国气候变化框架公约、巴黎和蒙特利尔协议采取的行动。它将产生科学，使英国在制定新的新兴化学品全球政策方面处于领先地位，但也将提供可供个别城市和地方当局在当地范围内实际使用的科学。所有这些证据要求，如果得到满足，将有可能产生巨大的财务节省(医疗成本)，通过有效的碳减排战略和生活质量的改善为商业带来经济机会。投资将支持一个新的长期大气设施的综合网络，用于永久位于英国的研究：i)位于曼彻斯特、伯明翰和伦敦市中心的新的城市空气污染研究观测站。二)新的真实世界道路运输排放研究能力，支持改进排放清单；二)升级国家研究系统，量化联合王国温室气体、其来源、汇和排放率，包括改进国家长期气体校准设施。这笔投资建立在英国现有的观测站基础设施上，为英国城市中一些具有战略意义的Defra空气污染监测站增加了最先进的研究仪器，并增加了用于核实英国排放清单的电信高塔网络。所需资本总额为430万GB，主要由商业仪器组成，外加一些定制软件和数据集成能力的支出。该提议是在2018年底之前交付这一概念。运营的年度资源/经常性成本预计约为资本的8%，并已从各种来源确认，包括高等院校、NERC国家能力和其他外部机构，包括Defra、DFT和地方当局。

Emissions of gases and particles to the atmosphere have profound effects across geographic scales, from the very local, on individuals, to the global climate system. Air pollutants include short-lived species that affect human health and damage ecosystems and longer-lived gases that impact on climate processes and stratospheric ozone. There are major outstanding scientific uncertainties associated with measuring i) the emissions, transformations and impacts of air pollution on public health, ii) the natural and man-made budgets of greenhouse gases and iii) the changing nature of ozone depleting chemicals. This is science that is globally significant but that has direct and urgent UK relevance. Science gaps currently limit the effectiveness of efforts to reduce the national health costs of pollution and ecosystem damage, and they create major uncertainties in the delivery of cost-effective greenhouse gas reductions and industry actions to support the recovery of stratospheric ozone.New capital investment is required in a transformative and open access research infrastructure for the UK to support world-leading scientific research in the atmospheric sciences and to deliver key evidence to Government as a co-benefit. The investment will support the UK in its efforts to improve air quality in cities by providing direct evidence of pollution composition, trends and where actions would be effective. Consequently, it will enhance the UK capacity to meet European and national targets for human pollution exposure, for ozone ecosystem exposure, the National Emissions Ceiling Directive and trans-boundary Gothenburg protocol. It will provide unique high precision information on national emissions of greenhouse gases that will demonstrate UK commitments to, and compliance with, its own legally binding targets set out in Climate Change Act and UK actions via UNFCCC, Paris and Montreal Agreements. It will generate science that will give the UK a leadership position for developing global policy on new emerging chemicals, but also provide science that can be used practically at the local scale by individual cities and Local Authorities. All these evidential requirements, if met, have the potential to generate large financial savings (in health costs), economic opportunities for business through effective carbon reduction strategies and improvements in quality of life.The investment would support a new integrated network of long-term atmospheric facilities for research permanently located in the UK: i) New urban air pollution research observatories ("supersites") located in central Manchester, Birmingham and London. ii) A new real-world road transport emissions research capability supporting to improve emissions inventoriesiii) An upgraded national research system for the quantification of UK greenhouse gases, their sources, sinks and emission rates, including improved national calibration facilities for long-lived gases. The investment builds on existing observatory infrastructure in the UK, adding state of the art research instrumentation to some strategically located Defra air pollution monitoring stations in UK cities and to the network of telecoms tall-towers used to verify UK emissions inventories. The capital required is £4.3M in total, predominately composed of commercially available instrumentation, plus some expenditure on bespoke software and data integration capability. The proposal is to deliver the concept by end of 2018. Annual resource/recurrent costs for operation are anticipated to be of the order 8% of capital, and have been confirmed from a mix of sources including HEIs, NERC national capability and other external agencies including Defra, DfT, and Local Authorities.