Tackling Air Pollution and Climate Change: 'A Bumpy Road Towards
the Common Good' This page updated May 14, 2009 Chair’s Air
Pollution Seminar Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Tackling Air
Pollution Frank Raes, Ph.D. The Joint Research Center (JRC) have
developed scenarios for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases
and air pollutants between 2000 and 2050, scenarios that are
considered realistic by policy makers in Europe. We studied
their effect on climate and air quality based on two types of
models: the Global Circulation Model ECHAM5 (GCM) and the
Chemical Transport Model TM5 The GCM calculations show how
increasing GHG concentrations between 2000 and 2030 (expected
without any climate policy) result in a global mean equilibrium
temperature increase of 1.20 °C. The combined effect of
increasing GHGs and decreasing aerosols (expected from air
pollution abatement) leads an increase of 2.18 °C, and to more
than 4 °C in vast regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Global
precipitation is also predicted to increase. The r