A modelling method for estimating transboundary air pollution in southeastern Europe

A new methodology is presented for the model estimation of an import–export pollution balance across country borders based on the classification of the synoptic scale atmospheric circulation. As an application, the transboundary transport of SO2 and NOx across the Greek borders is investigated for the year 1995. The annual total inflow–outflow fluxes were derived by weighting the model results with the annual relative frequency of the corresponding synoptic type appearance. The results of the new modelling method are similar to those following the day-by-day calculation of the inflow–outflow fluxes for the whole year 1995 using the same models. The advantage of the new methodology is that it is definitely less time-consuming than the day-by-day calculations. Hence, the proposed methodology can be employed as a practical tool for several applications requiring the implementation of complex models over longer time periods.