Department of Environmental Science and DCE - Danish Centre for Environment and Energy carries out national monitoring of air pollution and atmospheric deposition of pollution in Denmark. This is carried out on behalf of the Ministry of Environment, who has the main responsibility of the national air pollution monitoring program. The program is organized in order to implement the international directives (EU and UNECE) and national requirements on air pollution monitoring. The national air pollution monitoring program is part of the National Monitoring Programme for the aquatic and terrestrial environment (NOVANA).

The monitoring program has two major objectives. Firstly, air pollution levels are measured in order to control that Denmark comply with the limit values. Secondly, trends are monitored to evaluate whether the national and international initiatives for air pollution regulation are actually working.

The monitoring program consists of measurements supplemented by model calculations. The measurements are conducted all year around at 18 monitoring stations where the most important air pollution components are measured along with deposition of air pollution to precipitation. The model calculations are performed with a number of air quality models, which geographically covers the Northern hemisphere down to the individual Danish address or terrestrial or aquatic ecosystem.

The department have been responsible for the monitoring program for more than 30 years, which ensures high methodological stability and a time series of high quality. Every year the department participates in international inter-comparisons in order to ensure and document measurements with high quality. We furthermore work as the Scientific Data Centre for Air Quality and the National Reference Laboratory for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.