New Chapter in Book
Regional and Urban Air Quality in Southeast Asia: Maritime Continent
This chapter focuses on the regional and urban air quality in the Maritime Continent. The region hosts many sources of biogenic and anthropogenic airborne pollutants, with rapidly urbanizing megacities as some of the major emission sources but also receptors of pollution. Because of complex topography and distribution of thousands of islands surrounded by the warmest water body on the planet, the Maritime Continent is also a region of deep convection that is important for global atmospheric circulation. Thus, with its complex meteorology and unique pollution sources that are still relatively poorly understood, the Maritime Continent is an interesting region to study the emissions, formation, and fate of particulate and gaseous pollution. This chapter comprises four main sections, focusing on the status of air quality in the major cities of four Maritime Continent countries, in the order of latitude namely, Metro Manila, Philippines, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the city-state of Singapore, and Jakarta, Indonesia. The emphasis was given to these key cities because of the availability of monitoring data enabling scientific research on relevant atmospheric composition, characteristics of airborne pollutants, and impacts of pollution transport on urban air quality. Each section begins with a general overview of the city, followed by a discussion on existing air quality (AQ), country policy, AQ monitoring progression, and AQ-climate issues identified. A summary and country perspective conclude each section with concerns on the air quality-climate interactions and recommended steps moving forward.
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