Regulatory Air Pollution Modelling in Poland: Is It Time for an Update?

Abstract Over the last two decades, significant changes have taken place in the Polish atmospheric air-quality protection system. With Poland’s accession to the European Union, air quality management was introduced, with the aim of improving air quality in areas where limits were exceeded into compliance with the established norms. This management system was based on two components: a system of periodic assessments, which resulted in the classification of administrative zones based on air quality status, and air quality improvement plans, which were developed for zones where limits had been exceeded. Within this system, modern models of pollutant dispersion and transformation in the atmosphere were applied to serve as a complementary tool for assessment of the present state, and as a basic tool for program development. Despite these changes, emission permitting procedures still rely on a methodology developed more than half a century ago, when there were radical differences in the state of air pollution; emission sources; standards; knowledge; data availability; and computational resources. This resulted in substantial discrepancies between the methods used to improve air quality and the tools employed in administrative procedures regarding emissions from sources requiring permits. This article aims to highlight the possibility of a radical modernization of the procedures used in permitting processes that would align them with contemporary requirements. Here, we focus our attention on stochastic Lagrangian particle dispersion models, which are considered the most accurate and precise in describing the phenomena of pollutant movement in the atmosphere.