Efficient mitigation strategy to be implemented by local authorities will be fed by ACCEPT with high quality long terms observations of key atmospheric parameters representative of the regional background pollution levels and providing information on 1) the major sources responsible for air pollution in Cyprus, 2) their trends (seasonal, multi-annual), and 3) their geographical origin (local versus long-range transport). These specific observations, currently not performed by the national air quality network, will ultimately represent a major constrain for atmospheric-climate model developments proposed hereafter.
The Cyprus Atmospheric Observatory (CAO)
The Cyprus Atmospheric Observatory (CAO; https://cao.cyi.ac.cy/) provides high quality, long-term continuous observations on key atmospheric pollutants relevant to air quality and climate change. CAO infrastructure is made of a network of three atmospheric monitoring stations located in three different sites in Cyprus: Agia Marina Xyliatou, Troodos, and the Cyprus Institute’s Athalassa Campus in Nicosia. It offers on-site facilities and supportive infrastructure for research, development, and testing of technologies related to atmospheric measurements.
CAO will provide high quality, long-term observations of key atmospheric pollutants relevant to air quality and climate change.
The Department of Labour Inspection (DLI) of the Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance (MLWSI) is the Competent Authority for the monitoring of various atmospheric pollutants, as well as for the assessment and management of air quality, so as to safeguard the health and well-being of citizens and the protection of vegetation and the environment in general.
Ten existing monitoring station of the DLI that are distributed around the country (http://www.airquality.dli.mlsi.gov.cy/) will be equipped with low-cost instruments developed at the Cyprus Institute for real-time measurements of the concentration and size of atmospheric particles. These instruments will expand the capabilities of the national air quality monitoring network operated by DLI.
By integrating expertise in electronics engineering, material science, fluid dynamics and information technology, recent advances at the Instrumentation Lab (INL) of CARE-C have led to new possibilities in the development of miniaturized, lightweight and cost-effective instruments for measuring aerosol particles and gaseous pollutants.
New lightweight, cost-effective, miniaturized atmospheric sensors will be developed by, optimized and tested in real-world conditions to overcome current limitation in the monitoring/control of air quality. These sensors will be deployed in a dense network, operating under field campaign conditions. The potential of a dense network of these sensors operating in urban area will demonstrated here, providing new insight on human exposure to urban air pollution.