Influence of climate change on the environmental behavior and distribution of persistent organic pollutants (POPs)

The climate temporal reconstruction shows how the Earth’s climate is in continuous change. Evidence of climate change has been observed at both the global and regional scales. The environmental contamination caused by Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) is also a global concerning issue. This Ph.D. thesis aims at investigating which effects climate change would exert on the environmental distribution of POPs, priority pollutants which behavior is affected by climate variables. First, the concepts about climate change and POPs are introduced, the methods which will be used in the applicative part are described, and a review on the consequences of climate change on POPs behavior and on POPs-related activities (i.e. monitoring, modeling and regulation) is presented. In the application section, multimedia fate and transport models are applied in order to investigate the climate change effect on POPs environmental behavior through the development of two case studies. The first model exercise aims at understanding which factors are more effective in determining POPs environmental behavior under a climate change scenario through the application of a global fate and transport model (BETR Global) to two climate scenarios, a present climate scenario and the A2 climate change scenario, a reference climate change scenario defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The second case study consists on the creation of a level III fugacity model for the Adriatic Sea, and is evaluated and then is parameterized following the A1B climate change scenario as it is defined by the IPCC in order to investigate which is the effect of climate change on POPs environmental distribution and concentration.