The European Commission and the Italian Shipping Line “Costa Crociere” have launched a new way of monitoring man-made pollution of the atmosphere - essential to improving our understanding of climate change. An automatic air pollution monitoring station has been placed on board the Ship “Costa Fortuna” which follows a regular route in the western Mediterranean basin during Spring, Summer and Autumn. The monitoring station will provide new information on over-sea measurements, which are rarely taken, and improve our current understanding of the effects of pollution on climate change,

EU Commissioner for Research, Janez Potocnik, said “this partnership is a good example of the private and public sectors working together to find new ways of obtaining data which is important for our understanding of climate change”.

The dry and warm Mediterranean climate is one of the reasons why millions of tourists like to spend their holidays in Southern Europe. However, the climate conditions, though pleasant for holiday-makers, may cause increasing problems for agriculture, ecosystems and drinking water resources. Model calculations suggest that the impact of atmospheric greenhouse gases from man-made sources will further reduce rainfall in the area, thus leading to enhanced drought problems. In fact, the trend observed in the last century in this area has been towards lower rainfall.

Beside the long-life greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, also short-lived air pollutants such as ozone in the lower atmosphere and light-absorbing particles (so-called black carbon) seem to cause important man-made influences in the absorption of radiation in the atmosphere. In the Mediterranean Basin, air pollution comes from urban centres along the coast, from long-range transport and from intense shipping traffic. Research has shown that the impact of aerosols on radiation in this area is among the highest in the world, thus making the Mediterranean an ideal study site for climate research. It is believed that the heating of the lower atmosphere, caused by the enhanced absorption of light due to air pollution, can reduce rain clouds and thus intensify droughts.

The new automatic air pollution monitoring station installed by the European Commission’s DG Joint Research Centre (JRC) on the Italian cruise ship “Costa Fortuna” will provide some of the data that is urgently needed by scientists to check whether their computer models of the atmosphere can be confirmed by real observations. This will enable the European Commission and the EU Member States to improve their climate change/air pollution policies.