Author(s)

J.G. Kretzchmar

Abstract

The world's ten largest megacities are the metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, New York, Shanghai, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Bombay and Rio de Janeiro. All those cities have significantly grown over the past twenty years as well with respect to their size, their population as their economic activity. All of them consequently increased their total energy consumption. As air pollution in major urban areas is to a large extent due to the consumption of (fossil) fuel(s), it is obvious that present air pollution levels, as well as their trends deserve special attention in those megacities. While data availability is hardly comparable in each of the ten cities, the paper reviews and summarizes the available information on energy consumption and air pollution due to sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozo

Keywords