Italy is included among the signatory countries of the EMEP protocol and, as such, is part of a large scientific network that carries out numerous activities, such as the collection of national emission data of the pollutants of interest, the monitoring of air quality, precipitation and meteorological parameters, the development of transport models and deposition of atmospheric pollutants.
The information and data collected within the network are essential to identify the most suitable air quality monitoring strategies to reduce and mitigate the levels of the main air pollutants.
According to this protocol, each participating country must set up an appropriate number of monitoring stations, such as to ensure adequate representativeness of the characteristics of the territory. Each station must also be organized and equipped according to the specific objectives to be achieved, according to a subdivision into three distinct levels. Level 1 stations help provide long-term data with daily temporal resolution; they include measurements of the main meteorological parameters and chemical / physical data useful for describing some aspects of tropospheric chemistry and for calculating the deposition rates of atmospheric dust, the concentrations of photochemical oxidants, acidifying and eutrophicating species and heavy metals.
Italy has participated in the EMEP program since its first implementation and the CNR Institute on Atmospheric Pollution (CNR-IIA) has actively contributed both as a National Focal Point and by managing the Montelibretti station, located at the observatory A Liberti from the Research Area of ​​Rome1.
In order to return to acquire a complete air quality database and comply with the scientific objectives of the protocol, the CNR-IIA will deal with the relaunch of the activities of the EMEP program for Italy, restoring the Montelibretti site, setting up a new site on the island of Lampedusa and ensuring the integration of the national network. It will also act as a single point of contact for the international institutions that collect and use the data produced by the network.