Reconstruction of Lead (Pb) Fluxes in Europe during 1955-1995 and Evaluation of Gasoline Lead Content Regulations

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:

Mariza Costa-Cabral (GKSS Research Center, D-21502 Geesthacht Germany, tel. 49-4152-872819, fax. 49-4152-871888, email: cabral@gkss.de), Charlotte Hagner, Frauke Feser and Hans von Storch

ABSTRACT:

Most of the lead found in the environment today is of anthropogenic origin, and most of it has resulted from gasoline combustion over the last few decades. The transport of lead in the European environment in the40-year period 1955-1995 is reconstructed in order to evaluate the impacts of past European regulations of gasoline lead content which, in successive steps, brought this content down from the high 0.4 g Pb/l before the early1970's to the low 0.013 g Pb/l in the "unleaded" variety available today. A climate reconstruction estimates wind, rainfall and mixing layer depth conditions over Europe during these 40 years. The REMO regional climate model is used [1], with a 0.5-degree resolution grid and 6-hour time steps. The spectral nudging technique [2] guarantees agreement with the large-scale features of the NCEP reanalysis, known to be in accord with observations. Expert estimates of the emission rates of lead over Europe at the 0.5 degree resolution are available [3]. The TUBES model [4] is used to represent the atmospheric transport and deposition of lead. A modified Universal Soil Loss Equation represents the transport of lead by soil erosion using estimates of effective runoff provided by a hydrologic model of the Elbe basin [5] combined with the SEWAB land-surface scheme[6]. Impacts of the European historical regulations on the German industrial markets are summarized in [7].

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273-278.

[2] von Storch, H., H. Langenberg, and F. Feser, A Spectral Nudging Technique for Dynamical Downscaling Purposes, submitted for publication, 1999.

[3] Pacyna, J.M., and E.G. Pacyna, 1999: Atmospheric emissions of anthropogenic lead in Europe: Improvements, updates, historical data and projections, A technical report for GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany.

[4] Costa-Cabral, M.C., 1999: The TUBES algorithm for the exact representation of advective transport in a two-dimensional discretized flow field, GKSS Research Centre, report no. 99/E/60.

[5] Lobmeyer, M., D. Lohmann and C. Ruhe, 1999: An application of a large scale conceptual hydrological model over the Elbe region, Hydrology and

Earth System Sciences, 3(3), 363-374.

[6] Mengelkamp, H.-T., K. Warrach and E. Raschke, 1999: SEWAB – a parameterization of the Surface Energy and Water Balance for atmospheric and hydrologic models, Advances in Water Resources 23, 165-175.

[7] Hagner, C., 1999: Historical review of European gasoline lead content regulations and their impacts on German industrial markets, GKSS Research Centre, report no. 99/E/30.