To what extent is the description of streets important in estimating local air quality: a case study over Paris

Squarcioni, Alexis; Roustan, Yelva; Valari, Myrto; Kim, Youngseob; Sartelet, Karine; Lugon, Lya; Dugay, Fabrice; Voitot, Robin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-93-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-93-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Air quality research at street level – Part II (ACP/GMD inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-93-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 1

Research article

|

07 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 07 Jan 2025

To what extent is the description of streets important in estimating local air quality: a case study over Paris

Alexis Squarcioni, Yelva Roustan, Myrto Valari, Youngseob Kim, Karine Sartelet, Lya Lugon, Fabrice Dugay, and Robin Voitot

Data sets

L'observatoire de la qualité de l'air en Île-de-France Airparif https://www.geodair.fr/donnees/export-advanced

munich_chimere_data_repository Alexis Squarcioni https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14164944

CORINE Land Cover 2018 (raster 100 m), Europe, 6-yearly - version 2020_20u1 European Union's Copernicus Land Monitoring Service https://doi.org/10.2909/960998c1-1870-4e82-8051-6485205ebbac

Model code and software

The Model of Urban Network of Intersecting Canyons and Highways (MUNICH) Youngseob Kim et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6167477

The CHIMERE v2020r1 online chemistry-transport model Laurent Menut et al. https://doi.org/10.14768/8afd9058-909c-4827-94b8-69f05f7bb46d

Short summary

This study highlights the interest of using a street-network model to estimate pollutant concentrations of NO_x, NO₂, and PM_2.5 in heterogeneous urban areas, particularly those adjacent to highways, compared with the subgrid-scale approach embedded in the 3D Eulerian model CHIMERE. However, the study also reveals comparable performances between the two approaches for the aforementioned pollutants in areas near the city center, where urban characteristics are more uniform.