Transboundary atmospheric pollution in Southeast Asia: current methods, limitations and future developments

Abstract

Transboundary atmospheric pollution (TAP) has emerged over the last three decades as a major challenge to countries in Southeast Asia (SEA). A limited understanding of the link between pollution emissions and their presence and effects in receiving locations (or the source-receptor relationship), in such a dynamic region covering a huge geographical area, poses a major obstacle to resolving the multitude of challenges relating to TAP in SEA. Focusing on SEA, this paper reviews the approaches used in collecting atmospheric pollution data and determining TAP. Suggestions as to how the situation may be improved are provided. Future research directions are also highlighted.

Keywords:

• Atmospheric pollution
• long-range transported pollution
• proportional contributions
• source appointment
• source-receptor relationship

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Anneliese Kramer-Dahl, Prof. Rajasekhar Bala, Letisha Sarah Fong Rui Zhen and Jared David Moore for their kind support and helpful suggestions on the content and structure of this paper. We also gratefully thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 SCPs are a byproduct of fossil fuel burning that are widely dispersed and preserved well under most sedimentary conditions. They are thus a useful proxy of anthropogenic activities leading to TAP (Rose, 2015).

2 Biomass-burning Aerosols in South East Asia: Smoke Impact Assessment.

3 Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific.