TU Delft researcher develops model assessing impacts of transportation emissions on climate

December 11, 2018 |

In the Netherlands, a PhD candidate at TU Delft created a unique chemistry-climate response model called TransClim (Modelling the effect of surface Transportation on Climate) which assesses the impact and the contribution of road traffic emission scenarios on O3 and CH4 concentration as well as their subsequent climate effect.

‘Comparing the results delivered by TransClim with simulations of the complex global chemistry climate model EMAC, reveals very low deviations. TransClim reproduces the results calculated by EMAC very well. TransClim thus offers a new method to quickly assess the climate impact and the contribution of mitigation strategies for road traffic in a sufficiently accurate manner. As TransClim simulates about 6,000 times faster than a complex chemistry climate model, it enables to quickly quantify the effect of many emission scenarios in different regions.’

TransClim made it possible to assess the climate effect of three prospective mitigation options of German road traffic. The future emission scenario including the strictest environmental regulations and emission controls leads to the strongest decrease of O3 and CH4 radiative forcing. ‘Secondly, two scenarios have been constructed describing the cases that European vehicles use fuel blends containing a low and a high proportion of biofuels. Simulations with TransClim reveal that fuels with a low content of biofuels mainly reduce CH4, while fuels with a high content of biofuels reduce tropospheric O3.’

Category: Research

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