Improving the Representation of Agricultural Ammonia Emissions for a Better Air Quality Forecasting Over France: A Simple Model to Estimate Fertilization Dates from Meteorological Constraints

Nitrogen fertilization is the main source of amonia (NH
₃
) emissions in France. Amonia is a major atmospheric pollutant impacting environment and human health, therefore its monitoring and forecasting is of main importance. Our research deals with improving the spatial and temporal variability of ammonia emissions from agriculture, in particular by exploring how meteorological constraints influence agricultural practices of fertilization. Within this context we developped a simple model based on air temperature, precipitations, and agricultural practices to estimate possible dates of fertilizations. This approach allows to reduce fertilization temporal windows thus giving the perspective to update the NH
₃
inventories used as input by Chemistry-Transport Models (CTM).