scholarly journals Effects of urban land expansion on the regional meteorology and air quality of eastern China

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (15) ◽  
pp. 8597-8614 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tao ◽  
J. Liu ◽  
G. A. Ban-Weiss ◽  
D. A. Hauglustaine ◽  
L. Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Rapid urbanization throughout eastern China is imposing an irreversible effect on local climate and air quality. In this paper, we examine the response of a range of meteorological and air quality indicators to urbanization. Our study uses the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF/Chem) to simulate the climate and air quality impacts of four hypothetical urbanization scenarios with fixed surface pollutant emissions during the month of July from 2008 to 2012. An improved integrated process rate (IPR) analysis scheme is implemented in WRF/Chem to investigate the mechanisms behind the forcing–response relationship at the process level. For all years, as urban land area expands, concentrations of CO, elemental carbon (EC), and particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) tend to decrease near the surface (below ~ 500 m), but increase at higher altitudes (1–3 km), resulting in a reduced vertical concentration gradient. On the other hand, the O3 burden, averaged over all newly urbanized grid cells, consistently increases from the surface to a height of about 4 km. Sensitivity tests show that the responses of pollutant concentrations to the spatial extent of urbanization are nearly linear near the surface, but nonlinear at higher altitudes. Over eastern China, each 10 % increase in nearby urban land coverage on average leads to a decrease of approximately 2 % in surface concentrations for CO, EC, and PM2.5, while for O3 an increase of about 1 % is simulated. At 800 hPa, pollutants' concentrations tend to increase even more rapidly with an increase in nearby urban land coverage. This indicates that as large tracts of new urban land emerge, the influence of urban expansion on meteorology and air pollution would be significantly amplified. IPR analysis reveals the contribution of individual atmospheric processes to pollutants' concentration changes. It indicates that, for primary pollutants, the enhanced sink (source) caused by turbulent mixing and vertical advection in the lower (upper) atmosphere could be a key factor in changes to simulated vertical profiles. The evolution of secondary pollutants is further influenced by the upward relocation of precursors that impact gas-phase chemistry for O3 and aerosol processes for PM2.5. Our study indicates that dense urbanization has a moderate dilution effect on surface primary airborne contaminants, but may intensify severe haze and ozone pollution if local emissions are not well controlled.

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 10299-10340 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tao ◽  
J. Liu ◽  
G. A. Ban-Weiss ◽  
D. A. Hauglustaine ◽  
L. Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Rapid urbanization throughout Eastern China is imposing an irreversible effect on local climate and air quality. In this paper, we examine the response of a range of meteorological and air quality indicators to urbanization. Our study uses the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) to simulate the climate and air quality impacts of four hypothetical urbanization scenarios with fixed surface pollutant emissions during the month of July from 2008 to 2012. An improved integrated process rate (IPR) analysis scheme is implemented in WRF/Chem to investigate the mechanisms behind the forcing–response relationship at the process level. For all years, as urban land area expands, concentrations of CO, elemental carbon (EC), and particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) tend to decrease near the surface (below ~ 500 m), but increase at higher altitudes (1–3 km), resulting in a reduced vertical concentration gradient. On the other hand, the O3 burden averaged over all newly urbanized grid cells consistently increases from the surface to a height of about 4 km. Sensitivity tests show that the response of meteorology and pollutant concentrations to the spatial extent of urbanization are nearly linear near the surface, but nonlinear at higher altitudes. Over eastern China, each 10% increase in nearby urban land coverage (NULC) on average leads to a decrease of approximately 2% in surface concentrations for CO, EC, and PM2.5, while for O3 an increase of about 1% is simulated. At 800 hPa, each 10% increase in the square of NULC enhances air pollution concentrations by 5–10%, depending on species. This indicates that as large tracts of new urban land emerge, the influence of urban expansion on meteorology and air pollution would be amplified. IPR results indicate that, for primary pollutants, the enhanced sink (source) caused by turbulent mixing and vertical advection in the lower (upper) atmosphere could be a key factor in changes to simulated vertical profiles. The evolution of secondary pollutants is further influenced by the upward relocation of precursors that impact gas phase chemistry for O3 and aerosol processes for PM2.5. Our study indicates that dense urbanization has a moderate dilution effect on surface primary airborne contaminants, but may intensify severe haze and ozone pollution if local emissions are not well controlled.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 989
Author(s):  
Jing Qian ◽  
Qiming Zhou ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Bo Sun

Investigation of urban expansion can provide a better understanding of the urbanization process and its driving forces, which is critical for environmental management and land use planning. Total of 514 sampling points from the aerial photos and field sampling were applied to assess the image accuracy. A Conversion of Land Use and its Effect at Small Region Extent (CLUE-S) model was established to simulate the urbanization process at the township level in the North Xinjiang Economic Zone (NXEZ) of western China. Historical land use and land cover changes with multi-temporal remote sensing data were retrieved, and the underlying driving forces were explored by training the CLUE-S model. Moreover, future changes in urban development were simulated under different scenarios. Results showed that the overall accuracy reaches larger than 80% for the years of 2002, 2005, and 2007, and the corresponding kappa coefficient is bigger than 0.8. The NXEZ is at a premature development stage compared with urban clusters in eastern China. Before 1999, the driving force in this region was primary industry development. In recent years, secondary industries started to show significance in urbanization. These findings indicate that the industrial base and economic development in the NXEZ are still relatively weak and have not taken a strong leading role. When industry and population become the main driving factors, the regional economy will enter a new stage of leap-forward development, which in turn will stimulate a new round of rapid urbanization.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (28) ◽  
pp. 7756-7761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Liu ◽  
Denise L. Mauzerall ◽  
Qi Chen ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Yu Song ◽  
...  

As part of the 12th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government has developed air pollution prevention and control plans for key regions with a focus on the power, transport, and industrial sectors. Here, we investigate the contribution of residential emissions to regional air pollution in highly polluted eastern China during the heating season, and find that dramatic improvements in air quality would also result from reduction in residential emissions. We use the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry to evaluate potential residential emission controls in Beijing and in the Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei (BTH) region. In January and February 2010, relative to the base case, eliminating residential emissions in Beijing reduced daily average surface PM2.5 (particulate mater with aerodynamic diameter equal or smaller than 2.5 micrometer) concentrations by 14 ± 7 μg⋅m−3 (22 ± 6% of a baseline concentration of 67 ± 41 μg⋅m−3; mean ± SD). Eliminating residential emissions in the BTH region reduced concentrations by 28 ± 19 μg⋅m−3 (40 ± 9% of 67 ± 41 μg⋅m−3), 44 ± 27 μg⋅m−3 (43 ± 10% of 99 ± 54 μg⋅m−3), and 25 ± 14 μg⋅m−3 (35 ± 8% of 70 ± 35 μg⋅m−3) in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei provinces, respectively. Annually, elimination of residential sources in the BTH region reduced emissions of primary PM2.5 by 32%, compared with 5%, 6%, and 58% achieved by eliminating emissions from the transportation, power, and industry sectors, respectively. We also find air quality in Beijing would benefit substantially from reductions in residential emissions from regional controls in Tianjin and Hebei, indicating the value of policies at the regional level.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinli Ke ◽  
Feng Wu ◽  
Caixue Ma

Urban land expansion plays an important role in climate change. It is significant to select a reasonable urban expansion pattern to mitigate the impact of urban land expansion on the regional climate in the rapid urbanization process. In this paper, taking Wuhan metropolitan as the case study area, and three urbanization patterns scenarios are designed to simulate spatial patterns of urban land expansion in the future using the Partitioned and Asynchronous Cellular Automata Model. Then, simulation results of land use are adjusted and inputted into WRF (Weather Research and Forecast) model to simulate regional climate change. The results show that: (1) warming effect is strongest under centralized urbanization while it is on the opposite under decentralized scenario; (2) the warming effect is stronger and wider in centralized urbanization scenario than in decentralized urbanization scenario; (3) the impact trends of urban land use expansion on precipitation are basically the same under different scenarios; (4) and spatial distribution of rainfall was more concentrated under centralized urbanization scenario, and there is a rainfall center of wider scope, greater intensity. Accordingly, it can be concluded that decentralized urbanization is a reasonable urbanization pattern to mitigate climate change in rapid urbanization period.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youwen Sun ◽  
Hao Yin ◽  
Cheng Liu ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Yuan Cheng ◽  
...  

Abstract. The major air pollutant emissions have decreased and the overall air quality has substantially improved across China in recent years as a consequence of active clean air policies for mitigating severe air pollution problems. As key precursors of formaldehyde (HCHO) and ozone (O3), the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in China are still increasing because current clean air policies lack mitigation measures for VOCs. In this study, we mapped the drivers of HCHO variability over eastern China using ground-based high-resolution Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry and GEOS-Chem model simulation. Diurnal, seasonal, and interannual variability of HCHO over eastern China was investigated and hydroxyl (OH) radical production from HCHO was evaluated. The relative contributions of emitted and photochemical sources to the observed HCHO were analysed by using ground level carbon monoxide (CO) and Ox (O3 + nitrogen oxide (NO2)) as tracers for emitted and photochemical HCHO, respectively. Contributions of various emission sectors and geographical transport to the observed HCHO summertime enhancements were determined by using a GEOS-Chem tagged-tracer simulation. The tropospheric HCHO volume mixing ratio (VMR) reached a maximum monthly mean value of (1.1 ± 0.27) ppbv in July and a minimum monthly mean value of (0.4 ± 0.11) ppbv in January. The tropospheric HCHO VMR time series from 2015–2019 shows a positive trend of (1.43 ± 0.14) % per yr. The photochemical HCHO is the dominant source of atmospheric HCHO over eastern China for most of the year (68.1 %). In the studied years, the HCHO photolysis was an important source of OH radical over eastern China during all sunlight hours of both summer and winter days. The anthropogenic emissions (fossil fuel + biofuel emissions) accounted for 31.96 % and the natural emissions (biomass burning + biogenic) accounted for 48.75 % of HCHO summertime enhancements. The observed HCHO summertime enhancements were largely attributed to the emissions within China (76.92 %), where eastern China dominated the contribution (46.24 %). The increased trend in HCHO in recent years was largely attributed to the increase in the HCHO precursors such as CH4 and nonmethane VOCs (NMVOCs). This study can provide an evaluation of recent VOC emissions and regional photochemical capacity in China. In addition, this study is also important for regulatory and control purposes and will help to improve urban air quality and contribute to the formation of new Chinese clean air policies in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 5899-5909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yucong Miao ◽  
Huizheng Che ◽  
Xiaoye Zhang ◽  
Shuhua Liu

Abstract. Rapid urbanization and industrialization have led to deterioration of air quality in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region due to high loadings of PM2.5. Heavy aerosol pollution frequently occurs in winter, in close relation to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) meteorology. To unravel the physical processes that influence PBL structure and aerosol pollution in BTH, this study combined long-term observational data analyses, synoptic pattern classification, and meteorology–chemistry coupled simulations. During the winter of 2017 and 2018, Beijing and Tangshan often experienced heavy PM2.5 pollution simultaneously, accompanied by strong thermal inversion aloft. These concurrences of pollution in different cities were primarily regulated by the large-scale synoptic conditions. Using principal component analysis with geopotential height fields at the 850 hPa level during winter, two typical synoptic patterns associated with heavy pollution in BTH were identified. One pattern is characterized by a southeast-to-north pressure gradient across BTH, and the other is associated with high pressure in eastern China. Both synoptic types feature warmer air temperature at 1000 m a.g.l., which could suppress the development of the PBL. Under these unfavorable synoptic conditions, aerosols can modulate PBL structure through the radiative effect, which was examined using numerical simulations. The aerosol radiative effect can significantly lower the daytime boundary layer height through cooling the surface layer and heating the upper part of the PBL, leading to the deterioration of air quality. This PBL–aerosol feedback is sensitive to the aerosol vertical structure, which is more effective when the synoptic pattern can distribute more aerosols to the upper PBL.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Rabina Twayana ◽  
Sijan Bhandari ◽  
Reshma Shrestha

Nepal is considered one of the rapidly urbanizing countries in south Asia. Most of the urbanization is dominated in large and medium cities i.e., metropolitan, sub-metropolitan, and municipalities. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies in the sector of urban land governance are growing day by day due to their capability of mapping, analyzing, detecting changes, etc. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the urban growth pattern in Banepa Municipality during three decades (1992-2020) using freely available Landsat imageries and explore driving factors for change in the urban landscape using the AHP model. The Banepa municipality is taken as a study area as it is one of the growing urban municipalities in the context of Nepal. The supervised image classification was applied to classify the acquired satellite image data. The generated results from this study illustrate that urbanization is gradually increasing from 1992 to 2012 while, majority of the urban expansion happened during 2012-2020, and it is still growing rapidly along the major roads in a concentric pattern. This study also demonstrates the responsible driving factors for continuous urban growth during the study period. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was adopted to analyze the impact of drivers which reveals that, Internal migration (57%) is major drivers for change in urban dynamics whereas, commercialization (25%), population density (16%), and real estate business (5%) are other respective drivers for alteration of urban land inside the municipality. To prevent rapid urbanization in this municipality, the concerned authorities must take initiative for proper land use planning and its implementation on time. Recently, Nepal Government has endorsed Land Use Act 2019 for preventing the conversion of agricultural land into haphazard urban growth.


Author(s):  
Hammouda Mahjoub ◽  
Sahar Ben Romdhane ◽  
Nejla Mahjoub Said ◽  
Halemah Ibrahim El-Saeedy ◽  
Sami Znaidia ◽  
...  

Abstract Due to the rapid urbanization of many cities around the world, industrial manufacturing plants have grown rapidly, thus leading to the release of large amounts of pollutants into the environment. This is a main reason for the degradation of the local air quality, resulting in an increasing risk of unfavorable sanitary conditions for city dwellers. Understanding the dispersion of pollutants in local population environments, meteorological conditions and other physical characteristics is fundamental for predicting and evaluating air quality. This paper provides comprehensive details on the study of flow patterns and pollutant dispersion processes in urban areas. Several factors which include building geometry, local atmospheric effects, structural obstructions, and velocity of exhaust pollutants, are examined considering field data, wind tunnel tests, operational simulation techniques, and computational fluid dynamics. Good agreements are noticeable. Simultaneous evolutions of the velocity, thermal and scalar mass fraction fields of the pollutant emitting from a three-dimensional elevated source around a rectangular obstacle placed on a turbulent boundary layer wall, and also downstream the obstacle have been successfully carried out. The most serious pollutant levels in urban areas under various high wind velocities are identified.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (20) ◽  
pp. 15471-15489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher G. Nolte ◽  
Tanya L. Spero ◽  
Jared H. Bowden ◽  
Megan S. Mallard ◽  
Patrick D. Dolwick

Abstract. The potential impacts of climate change on regional ozone (O3) and fine particulate (PM2.5) air quality in the United States (US) are investigated by linking global climate simulations with regional-scale meteorological and chemical transport models. Regional climate at 2000 and at 2030 under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) is simulated by using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to downscale 11-year time slices from the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The downscaled meteorology is then used with the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to simulate air quality during each of these 11-year periods. The analysis isolates the future air quality differences arising from climate-driven changes in meteorological parameters and specific natural emissions sources that are strongly influenced by meteorology. Other factors that will affect future air quality, such as anthropogenic air pollutant emissions and chemical boundary conditions, are unchanged across the simulations. The regional climate fields represent historical daily maximum and daily minimum temperatures well, with mean biases of less than 2 K for most regions of the US and most seasons of the year and good representation of variability. Precipitation in the central and eastern US is well simulated for the historical period, with seasonal and annual biases generally less than 25 %, with positive biases exceeding 25 % in the western US throughout the year and in part of the eastern US during summer. Maximum daily 8 h ozone (MDA8 O3) is projected to increase during summer and autumn in the central and eastern US. The increase in summer mean MDA8 O3 is largest under RCP8.5, exceeding 4 ppb in some locations, with smaller seasonal mean increases of up to 2 ppb simulated during autumn and changes during spring generally less than 1 ppb. Increases are magnified at the upper end of the O3 distribution, particularly where projected increases in temperature are greater. Annual average PM2.5 concentration changes range from −1.0 to 1.0 µg m−3. Organic PM2.5 concentrations increase during summer and autumn due to increased biogenic emissions. Aerosol nitrate decreases during winter, accompanied by lesser decreases in ammonium and sulfate, due to warmer temperatures causing increased partitioning to the gas phase. Among meteorological factors examined to account for modeled changes in pollution, temperature and isoprene emissions are found to have the largest changes and the greatest impact on O3 concentrations.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luolin Wu ◽  
Ming Chang ◽  
Xuemei Wang ◽  
Jian Hang ◽  
Jinpu Zhang

Abstract. Rapid urbanization in China has led to heavy traffic flows in street networks within cities, especially in eastern China, the economically developed region. This has increased the risk of exposure to vehicle-related pollutants. To evaluate the impact of vehicle emissions and provide an on-road emission inventory with higher spatial–temporal resolution for street-network air quality models, in this study, we developed the Real-time On-road Emission (ROE v1.0) model to calculate street-scale on-road hot emissions by using real-time big data for traffic provided by the Gaode map navigation application. This Python-based model obtains street-scale traffic data from the map application programming interface (API), which are open-access and updated every minute for each road segment. The results of application of the model to Guangzhou, one of the three major cities in China, showed on-road vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC), PM10, and PM2.5 to be 35.22 × 104 Mg/a, 12.05 × 104 Mg/a, 4.10 × 104 Mg/a, 0.49 × 104 Mg/a, and 0.55 × 104 Mg/a, respectively. The spatial distribution reveals that the emission hotspots are located in some highway-intensive area and suburban town centers. Emission contributions show that the dominant contributors are light-duty vehicles (LDVs) and heavy-duty vehicles in urban areas and LDVs and heavy-duty trucks in suburban areas, indicating that the traffic control policies regarding duty trucks in urban areas are effective. In this study, the Model of Urban Network of Intersecting Canyons and Highways (MUNICH) was applied to investigate the impact of traffic volume change on street-scale photochemistry in the urban area by using the on-road emission results from the ROE model. The modeling results indicate that the daytime NOx concentrations on national holidays are 26.5 % and 9.1 % lower than those on normal weekdays and normal weekends, respectively. Conversely, the national holiday O3 concentrations exceed normal weekday and normal weekend amounts by 13.9 % and 10.6 %, respectively, owing to changes in the ratio of emission of VOCs and NOx. Thus, not only the on-road emission, but other emissions should be controlled in order to improve the air quality in Guangzhou. More significantly, the newly developed ROE model may provide promising and effective methodologies for analyzing real-time street-level traffic emissions and high-resolution air quality assessment for more typical cities or urban districts.


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