Urban Air Quality Studies in Mongolia: Pollution Characteristics and Future Research Needs

For the last decades, Mongolia has seen an extensive escalation in population growth, urbanization, and industrialization, together with great increase in mining and usage of vehicles. As a result, a substantial increase has taken place in the types and number of emission sources of air pollutants, especially in urban areas. During the cold season, air pollution level in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, is frequently ranked as the highest in the world. However, due to the lack of air quality management, the country is suffering from a deterioration of air quality. Despite the worse air pollution situation, due to insufficient research capacity of the country, to date, research works on characteristics of air pollution have mainly been based on current capability and/or collaboration with foreign institutes. The research gap in this area necessitates numerous investigations, which could have great importance in developing mitigating strategies and minimizing the adverse impact of air pollution on local and regional scales. This paper reviews previously available studies and reports in international scientific journals on air quality in Mongolia. Based on the existing research works, future needs of studies on ambient air pollution in Mongolia are suggested.