Keynote lecture by A.o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wladyslaw Szymanski on 20th November 2018 at ICELS 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand

21.11.2018

Air Pollution, Aerosols and Climate - past findings, present warnings and future musts

Wladyslaw Witold Szymanski
Faculty of Physics, Aerosol Physics and Environmental Physics DivisionUniversity of Vienna, Austria

 

Air pollution, especially related to the use of fossil fuels is not a modern problem – an assessment and some countermeasures were done in the distant past. In 1308, King Edward I forbids coal burning in London when Parliament was in session and in 1603, King James I orders coal from Scotland to be burned in his household instead the bituminous coal from Durham and Cornwall. In his writing in 1661 about the “The inconveniencie of the aer and smoak of London, John Evelyn wrote about “constant poison communicated by foul air”.

These rather local issues changed to much larger scale with the onset of the industrial revolution and continue globally until today. Besides the important issue of a regional negative impact on humans and environment, various air pollutants in gaseous and particulate form contribute also to global climatic problems.

 

Read the full abstract here.