Influence of climatic changes on pollution levels in the Balkan Peninsula

The aim of the paper is to study the influence of future climatic changes on some high pollution levels that can cause damages on plants, animals and human beings. The particular area of interest is the Balkan Peninsula. Four important quantities have been selected: (a) annual concentrations, (b) AOT40C (highAOT40C values can cause damages on plants and, first and foremost, crops), (c) AOT40F (high AOT40F values can cause damages on forest trees), (d) number of ‘‘bad days’’ (large numbers of ‘‘bad days’’ can cause damage to people suffering from asthmatic diseases). Critical levels for the quantities from (b), (c) and (d) are legislated by several directives of the European Parliament (see, for example, [European Parliament Directive 2002/3/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 12 February 2002 relating to ozone in ambient air, Official Journal of the European Communities L67 (2002) 14–30]). We are mainly interested in cases where the prescribed in the directives critical values are exceeded. An advanced mathematical model was used to run fourteen scenarios over a period of sixteen years. Results, which are obtained in the selected domain, the Balkan Peninsula, with some of these scenarios, are carefully studied. The major conclusion is that the increase of the temperature, alone or in combination with some other factors, leads to rather considerable increases of some pollution levels, which might become dangerous for the environment. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.