a b s t r a c tEmissions from land transport, and from road transport in particular, have significant impacts on the atmosphere and on climate change. This assessment gives an overview of past, present and future emissions from land transport, of their impacts on the atmospheric composition and air quality, on human health and climate change and on options for mitigation.In the past vehicle exhaust emission control has successfully reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. This contributed to improved air quality and reduced health impacts in industrialised countries. In developing countries however, pollutant emissions have been growing strongly, adversely affecting many populations. In addition, ozone and particulate matter change the radiative balance and hence contribute to global warming on shorter time scales. Latest knowledge on the magnitude of land transport's impact on global warming is reviewed here.In the future, road transport's emissions of these pollutants are expected to stagnate and then decrease globally. This will then help to improve the air quality notably in developing countries. On the contrary, emissions of carbon dioxide and of halocarbons from mobile air conditioners have been globally increasing and are further expected to grow. Consequently, road transport's impact on climate is gaining in importance. The expected efficiency improvements of vehicles and the introduction of biofuels will not be sufficient to offset the expected strong growth in both, passenger and freight transportation. Technical measures could offer a significant reduction potential, but strong interventions would be needed as markets do not initiate the necessary changes. Further reductions would need a resolute expansion of low-carbon fuels, a tripling of vehicle fuel efficiency and a stagnation in absolute transport volumes. Land transport will remain a key sector in climate change mitigation during the next decades.

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The main goal of this paper is to identify the drivers responsible for the high particulate matter concentrations observed in recent years in several urban areas in Poland. The problem was investigated using air quality and meteorological data from routine monitoring network, air mass back trajectories and multivariate statistical modelling. Air pollution in central and southern part of the country was analysed and compared with this in northern-eastern “The Green Lungs of Poland” region. The analysis showed that in all investigated locations, there is a clear annual cycle of observed concentrations, closely following temperature-heating cycles, with the highest concentrations noted in January. However, the main drivers differ along the country, being either connected with regional background pollution (in the central part of the country) or with local emission sources (in the southern part). The occurrence of high PM10 concentrations is most commonly associated with the influence of high-pressure systems that brought extremely cold and stable air masses form East or South of Europe. During analysed episodes, industrial point sources had the biggest (up to 70–80 %) share in PM10 levels on the days with maximum PM pollution, while remote and residential/traffic sources determined the air quality in the early stages of the episodes. Principal component analysis (PCA) shows that secondary inorganic aerosols account for long-range transported pollution, As, Cd, Pb and Zn for industrial point sources, while Cr and Cu for residential and traffic sources of PM10, respectively.

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