To design effective mitigation strategies, the origin ofemissions which produce air pollutants needs to be known. Contributors to airpollutants can be emission sources, like road traffic or industry, but also bemore specified to emission from one location or from a specified time.Chemistry transport models can be used to assess the origin of air pollutionacross a large domain. However, in traditional simulations the information onorigin is lost and brute force scenario studies are performed to assess theorigin. Alternatively, one can trace the origin of air pollutants throughout asimulation using a labeling approach. In this paper we document anddemonstrate a newly developed labeling module for the chemistry transportmodel LOTOS-EUROS which tracks the source allocation for all particulatematter components and precursor gases. Dedicated simulations confirmed thatthe new module functions correctly. The new module provides more accurateinformation about the source contributions than using a brute force approachwith scenario runs as the chemical regime remains unchanged. An importantadvantage of the new module is the reduction of computation costs and analysiswork associated with the calculations. The new module was applied to assessthe origin of particulate nitrate across the Netherlands. Averaged across theDutch territory, the main contributions to nitrate are derived from road andnon-road transport as well as power plants. Overall, only one-fifth of theconcentration derived from sources located inside the country. The newtechnology enables new research directions as improved information onpollution origin is desired for policy support as well as scientificapplications.
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