Historical reconstruction of background air pollution over France for 2000–2015

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes a 16-year dataset of air pollution concentrations and air quality indicators over France. Using a kriging method that combines background air quality measurements and modeling with the CHIMERE chemistry transport model, hourly concentrations of NO2, O3, PM10 and PM2.5 are produced with a spatial resolution of about 4 km. Regulatory indicators (annual average, SOMO35 (sum of ozone means over 35 ppb), AOT40 (accumulated ozone exposure over a threshold of 40 ppb), etc.) are also calculated from these hourly data. The NO2 and O3 datasets cover the period 2000–2015, as well as the annual PM10 data. Hourly PM10 concentrations are not available from 2000 to 2007 due to known artifacts in PM10 measurements. PM2.5 data are only available from 2009 onwards due to the limited number of measuring stations available before this date. The overall dataset was evaluated over all years by a cross-validation process against background stations (rural, sub-urban and urban) to take into account the data fusion between measurement and models in the method. The results are very good for PM10, PM2.5 and O3. They show an overestimation of NO2 concentrations in rural areas, while NO2 background values in urban areas are well represented. Maps of the main indicators are presented over several years, and trends are calculated. Finally, exposure and trends are calculated for the three main health-related indicators: annual averages of PM2.5, NO2 and SOMO35. The DOI link for the dataset is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5043645 (Real et al., 2021). We hope that the publication of this open dataset will facilitate further studies on the impacts of air pollution.