Topic description

SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT OF THE THESIS

Air quality is one of the most important environmental concerns of the 21st century. Significant efforts are being made at the European level, as part of environmental policies, to reduce anthropogenic emissions that lead to the formation of fine particulate matter. For these policies to be truly effective, it is essential to have accurate estimates of all pollutant emissions and their precursors, as well as an understanding of how they are transformed in the atmosphere. One of the greatest uncertainties in estimating air pollutant concentrations lies in quantifying the contribution of natural sources, which can act as precursors—while only the anthropogenic fraction can be targeted by management measures (Lehtipalo et al., ; Maison et al., ).

In particular, emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) are very difficult to quantify accurately and are also highly sensitive to var...