Issue 2

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for holistic environmental assessments of products and
processes. The unique feature of this methodology is its focus on the entire life cycle of a product, from
raw material extraction to final disposition. In order to assess the role of LCA in environmental management,
a comprehensive overview of its theoretical background (including recent aspects of its principles
and framework) is presented in this paper. From this overview it is obvious that, in spite of its drawbacks,
LCA is recognized as a valuable methodology in environmental management, capable of analysing and
assessing in a scientifical way the environmental consequences of various products and activities.
Complementary to this analysis, a life cycle inventory (LCI) case study from the Greek market is also presented.
In this LCI application, all the methodological issues and guidelines are taken into consideration
in order to calculate the resource requirements and the environmental loadings of ten alternative packaging
products while some of them are presented by each life cycle stage. The results of this LCI case
study cover a long list of inflows and outflows. Notwithstanding that these results are difficult to interpret,
they are very detailed and not affected by uncertainties introduced by impact assessment.

In this work the covariability of sea surface and lower troposphere temperatures (SST-AT) is investigated for
winter (DJFM) and summer (JJAS), over the whole northern hemisphere, by utilizing monthly anomalies in
grid boxes for a 22-year period. Air temperature variations in the lower troposphere are examined in terms
of 1000-500 hPa thickness. At first, factor analysis (FA) is applied on both sets of data in order to reduce their
dimensionality and to group objectively grid points with a similar long term temperature variability. Also, FA
revealed numerous teleconnections in both fields, most important being those governed by PNA in the
Pacific Ocean and NAO in the Atlantic Ocean. Then, by using the FA results as a guide, correlation coefficients
between the mean temperature time series of the subareas defined by FA in the two fields are estimated.
The highest values, up to r=0.70, were found for subareas located one over/under the other. Finally,
by introducing time lags, an attempt of forecasting either SST form AT or AT from SST is made. Although
in some cases the coefficients appear increasing, test showed that the increase is not statistically significant.
In any case, it appears that, on monthly time scale, it is the AT that controls SST and not the vice versa.

In the present work, Fourier Analysis is applied to the mean monthly NOx concentrations of the period
1989-1999, for a network of 7 stations. Treating NO and NO2 as a single primary pollutant, we succeeded
the assessment of NOx concentrations. The main causes of NOx emissions in urban areas are
the road traffic and the industrial activity.
The annual variation of NOx concentration is well described with only two harmonic components,
which explain over 90% of the total variance. The spatial distribution of the time of maximum, for every
one of the two harmonic components in Athens basin, is also presented.