Overview
The main goal of QUANTIFY is to quantify the climate impact of global and European transport systems for the present situation and for several scenarios of future development.
The climate impact of various transport modes (land surface, shipping, aviation) will be assessed, including those of long-lived greenhouse gases like CO2 and N2O, and in particular the effects of emissions of ozone precursors and particles, as well as of contrails and ship tracks.
The project goal includes provision of forecasts and other policy-relevant advice, which will be supplied to governments and to international assessments of climate change and ozone depletion, such as the IPCC reports (Kyoto Protocol) and WMO-UNEP ozone assessments (Montreal Protocol). Using significantly improved transport emission inventories, better evaluated and hence more reliable models, these new forecasts in QUANTIFY will represent a considerable improvement of current predictions. Long time scales are involved in the transport system and its effects on climate: Some transportation modes have long development and in-service times; some emissions have long residence times and thermal inertia of the climate system protracts possible effects. Yet the impact of short-lived species depends on location and time of the emissions. So several transport scenarios and potential mitigation options need to be assessed on a sound common basis to identify the most effective combination of short and long-term measures and to inform policymakers and industry. We aim to provide such guidance by focused field measurements, exploitation of existing data, a range of numerical models, and new policy-relevant metrics of climate change.
To achieve the goal, several advances in our fundamental understanding of atmospheric processes will be required such as the mechanisms by which pollutants are transported from exhaust into the free atmosphere, the impact of pollutants on clouds and the role of absorbing aerosols.