Background:Evidence on the association between short-term exposure to desert dust and health outcomes is controversial.Objectives:We aimed to estimate the short-term effects of particulate matter ≤ 10 μm (PM10) on mortality and hospital admissions in 13 Southern European cities, distinguishing between PM10 originating from the desert and from other sources.Methods:We identified desert dust advection days in multiple Mediterranean areas for 2001–2010 by combining modeling tools, back-trajectories, and satellite data. For each advection day, we estimated PM10 concentrations originating from desert, and computed PM10 from other sources by difference. We fitted city-specific Poisson regression models to estimate the association between PM from different sources (desert and non-desert) and daily mortality and emergency hospitalizations. Finally, we pooled city-specific results in a random-effects meta-analysis.Results:On average, 15% of days were affected by desert dust at ground level (desert PM10 > 0 μg/m3). Most episodes occurred in spring–summer, with increasing gradient of both frequency and intensity north–south and west–east of the Mediterranean basin. We found significant associations of both PM10 concentrations with mortality. Increases of 10 μg/m3 in non-desert and desert PM10 (lag 0–1 days) were associated with increases in natural mortality of 0.55% (95% CI: 0.24, 0.87%) and 0.65% (95% CI: 0.24, 1.06%), respectively. Similar associations were estimated for cardio-respiratory mortality and hospital admissions.Conclusions:PM10 originating from the desert was positively associated with mortality and hospitalizations in Southern Europe. Policy measures should aim at reducing population exposure to anthropogenic airborne particles even in areas with large contribution from desert dust advections.Citation:Stafoggia M, Zauli-Sajani S, Pey J, Samoli E, Alessandrini E, Basagaña X, Cernigliaro A, Chiusolo M, Demaria M, Díaz J, Faustini A, Katsouyanni K, Kelessis AG, Linares C, Marchesi S, Medina S, Pandolfi P, Pérez N, Querol X, Randi G, Ranzi A, Tobias A, Forastiere F, MED-PARTICLES Study Group. 2016. Desert dust outbreaks in Southern Europe: contribution to daily PM10 concentrations and short-term associations with mortality and hospital admissions. Environ Health Perspect 124:413–419; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1409164

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Abstract:This chapter presents an overview of the occurrences and effects of droughts through a study of the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) in the Emilia-Romagna region, which is located in the northern-central part of the Italian peninsula. The link between this index and large-scale atmospheric circulation was investigated and the SPI index was also used to predict drought. The study describes the development of a method of forecasting SPI index based on an earlier Interregional project (SEDEMED), involving a statistical downscaling scheme model using as input the large-scale seasonal forecasts obtained from Atmospheric Global Circulation Models. The downscaling scheme, which has already been used with relatively good results to predict surface parameters of temperature and precipitation, is applied to the SPI index, providing a statistical regionalization of this indicator Keywords: Drought, NAO, EB, SPI , Z500 METEOROLOGICAL DROUGHTS: INTRODUCTIONDrought is a natural phenomenon that occurs when precipitation is significantly lower than normal. Low precipitation can lead to severe hydrological deficit and cause serious problems for agriculture, the hydroelectric sector and industry, as well as deficit in the drinking water supply, with heavy consequences for the local population. In the long run, if a drought lasts many months or even years and involves a large area, it can permanently damage the environment and cause significant economic losses. In the Italian climate, droughts are not only possible, but also relatively frequent. Europe and the entire Mediterranean area have suffered major droughts in recent years. In the '70s and '80s north-western Europe was often subject to drought conditions (in 1972 and 1976, and from 1988 to 1992) and in the last few years drought conditions have also been experienced in large areas of central and southern Europe and in countries like France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The more and more frequent occurrence of sequences of heavy precipitation and flooding followed by periods characterized by low precipitation and drought has fueled fears that hydrological cycles could be changing, as a result of global warming. In the current literature, there are different definitions of drought depending on the duration of the phenomenon, on its spatial extension and on its effects or impacts on human activities. Different approaches and different choices of indicators may be used to describe the problem in relation to the different definitions. In this chapter, attention is focused only on meteorological and agricultural droughts and on the indicators correspondingly used to describe them."Meteorological drought" is defined as the lack of precipitation (expressed relative to a climatic value) for a sufficiently long period (a number of consecutive days of dry weather) to cause severe hydrologic imbalance in the area affected. Defined in this way "meteorological drought" depends on the area under examination and, more specifically, on what are the "normal" climatic conditions of ...

A B S T R A C TIn this paper we explore the new possibilities for early crop yield assessment at the local scale arising from the availability of dynamic crop growth models and of downscaled multi-model ensemble seasonal forecasts. We compare the use of the latter with other methods, based on crop growth models driven by observed climatic data only. The soil water balance model developed and used at ARPA Emilia-Romagna (CRITERIA) was integrated with crop growth routines from the model WOFOST 7.1. Some validation runs were first carried out and we verified with independent field data that the new integrated model satisfactorily simulated above-ground biomass and leaf area index. The model was then used to test the feasibility of using downscaled multi-model ensemble seasonal hindcasts, coming from the DEMETER European research project, in order to obtain early (i.e. 90, 60 and 30 d before harvest) yield assessments for winter wheat in northern Italy. For comparison, similar runs with climatology instead of hindcasts were also carried out. For the same purpose, we also produced six simple linear regression models of final crop yields on within season (end of March, April and May) storage organs and above-ground biomass values. Median yields obtained using downscaled DEMETER hindcasts always outperformed the simple regression models and were substantially equivalent to the climatology runs, with the exception of the June experiment, where the downscaled seasonal hindcasts were clearly better than all other methods in reproducing the winter wheat yields simulated with observed weather data. The crop growth model output dispersion was almost always significantly lower than the dispersion of the downscaled ensemble seasonal hindcast used as input for crop simulations.

Substantial efforts have been made in recent years to investigate the horizontal variability of air pollutants at regional and urban scales and epidemiological studies have taken advantage of resulting improvements in exposure assessment. On the contrary, only a few studies have investigated the vertical variability and their results are not consistent. In this study, a field experiment has been conducted to evaluate the variation of concentrations of different particle metrics and gaseous pollutants on the basis of floor height at a high rise building. Two 15-day monitoring campaigns were conducted in the urban area of Bologna, Northern Italy, one of the most polluted areas in Europe. Measurements sites were operated simultaneously at 2, 15, 26, 44 and 65 m a.g.l. Several particulate matter metrics including PM mass and chemical composition, particle number concentration and size distribution were measured. Time integrated measurement of NO and BTEX were also included in the monitoring campaigns. Measurements showed relevant vertical gradients for most traffic related pollutants. A monotonic gradient of PM was found with ground-to-top differences of 4% during the warm period and 11% during the cold period. Larger gradients were found for UFP (∼30% during both seasons) with a substantial loss of particles from ground to top in the sub-50 nm size range. The largest drops in concentrations for chemical components were found for Elemental Carbon (-27%), iron (-11%) and tin (-36%) during winter. The ground-to-top decline of concentrations for NO and benzene during winter was equal to 74% and 35%, respectively. In conclusion, our findings emphasize the need to include vertical variations of urban air pollutants when evaluating population exposure and associated health effects, especially in relation to some traffic related pollutants and particle metrics.

A large number of studies have shown much higher health effects of particulate matter (PM) during the warm compared to the cold season. In this paper we present the results of an experimental study carried out in an unoccupied test apartment with the aim of understanding the reasons behind the seasonal variations of the health effects due to ambient PM exposure. Measurements included indoor and outdoor PM mass and chemical composition as well as particle size distribution of ultrafine particles. Monitoring campaigns were carried out during summer and winter following a ventilation protocol developed to replicate typical occupant behaviour according to a questionnaire-based survey. Our findings showed that seasonal variation of the relationship between ambient and indoor mass concentrations cannot entirely explain the apparent difference in PM toxicity between seasons and size distribution and chemical composition of particles were identified as other possible causes of changes in the apparent PM toxicity. A marked decrease of ultrafine particles (<100 nm) passing from outdoors to indoors was observed during winter; this resulted in higher indoor exposure to nanoparticles (<50 nm) during summer. With regards to the chemical composition, a pooled analysis showed infiltration factors of chemical species similar to that obtained for PM mass with values increasing from 0.73 during winter to 0.90 during summer and few deviations from the pooled estimates. In particular, significantly lower infiltration factors and sink effect were found for nitrates and ammonium during winter. In addition, a marked increase in the contribution of indoor and outdoor sulfates to the total mass was observed during summer.

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Background: Much of the evidence on the health effects of airborne particles is based on mortality and hospital admissions, while the evidence from other morbidity indicators is still limited. Objective: To measure the relationship between particles with diameter below 10 mm (PM 10 ) and emergency ambulance dispatches (EAD). Methods: Daily EAD for six towns of the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) were obtained from a database collecting real-time data. Time series analyses were performed, and city-specific estimates were combined using meta-analytic techniques. Results: We found a significant percentage change of EAD associated with a 10 mg/m 3 increase of PM 10 for non-traumatic diseases (0.86%, 95%CI: 0.61,1.1%). A positive relationship was also found for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases without reaching statistical significance. The risks were much higher in the warm (April-September) than in the cold season (January-March and October-December). Conclusions: Emergency ambulance dispatches provide useful insight into the health effects of air pollution and may be useful to establish surveillance systems.