scholarly journals Air quality and emissions in the Yangtze River Delta, China

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 23657-23703
Author(s):  
L. Li ◽  
C. H. Chen ◽  
C. Huang ◽  
Y. J. Wang ◽  
H. Y. Huang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Regional trans-boundary air pollution has become an important issue in the field of air pollution modeling. This paper presents the results of the implementation of the MM5-CMAQ modeling system in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) for the months of January and July of 2004. The meteorological parameters are obtained by using the MM5 model. A new regional emission inventory with spatial and temporal allocations based on local statistical data has been developed to provide input emissions data to the MM5-CMAQ modeling system. The pollutant concentrations obtained from the MM5-CMAQ modeling system have been compared with observational data from the national air pollution monitoring network. It is found that air quality in winter in the YRD is generally worse than in summer, due mainly to unfavorable meteorological dispersion conditions. In winter the pollution transport from Northern China to the YRD reinforces the pollution caused by large local emissions. The monthly average concentration of SO2 in the YRD is 0.026 ± 0.011 mg m−3 in January and 0.017 ± 0.009 mg m−3 in July. Monthly average concentrations of NO2 in the YRD in January and July are 0.021 ± 0.009 mg m−3, and 0.014 ± 0.008 mg m−3 respectively. Visibility is also a problem, with average deciview values of 26.4 ± 2.95 dcv in winter and 17.6 ± 3.3 dcv in summer. The ozone concentration in the downtown area of a city like Zhoushan can be very high, with the highest simulated value reaching 107 ppb. Our results show that ozone and haze have become extremely important issues in the regional air quality. Thus, regional air pollution control is urgently needed to improve air quality in the YRD.

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1621-1639 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Li ◽  
C. H. Chen ◽  
J. S. Fu ◽  
C. Huang ◽  
D. G. Streets ◽  
...  

Abstract. Regional trans-boundary air pollution has become an important issue in the field of air pollution modeling. This paper presents the results of the implementation of the MM5-CMAQ modeling system in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) for the months of January and July of 2004. The meteorological parameters are obtained by using the MM5 model. A new regional emission inventory with spatial and temporal allocations based on local statistical data has been developed to provide input emissions data to the MM5-CMAQ modeling system. The pollutant concentrations obtained from the MM5-CMAQ modeling system have been compared with observational data from the national air pollution monitoring network. It is found that air quality in winter in the YRD is generally worse than in summer, due mainly to unfavorable meteorological dispersion conditions. In winter, the pollution transport from Northern China to the YRD reinforces the pollution caused by large local emissions. The monthly average concentration of SO2 in the YRD is 0.026 ± 0.011 mg m−3 in January and 0.017 ± 0.009 mg m−3 in July. Monthly average concentrations of NO2 in the YRD in January and July are 0.021 ± 0.009 mg m−3, and 0.014 ± 0.008 mg m−3, respectively. The monthly average concentration of PM10 in the YRD is 0.080 ± 0.028 mg m−3 in January and 0.025 ± 0.015 mg m−3 in July. Visibility is also a problem, with average deciview values of 26.4 ± 2.95 dcv in winter and 17.6 ± 3.3 dcv in summer. The ozone concentration in the downtown area of a city like Zhoushan can be very high, with the highest simulated value reaching 0.24 mg m−3. In January, the monthly average concentration of O3 in the YRD is 0.052 ± 0.011 mg m−3, and 0.054 ± 0.008 mg m−3 in July. Our results show that ozone and haze have become extremely important issues in the regional air quality. Thus, regional air pollution control is urgently needed to improve air quality in the YRD.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 21507-21540
Author(s):  
X. Fu ◽  
S. X. Wang ◽  
Z. Cheng ◽  
J. Xing ◽  
B. Zhao ◽  
...  

Abstract. During 1 to 6 May 2011, a dust event was observed in the Yangtze River Delta region (YRD). The highest PM10 concentration reached over 1000 μg m−3 and the visibility was below 3 km. In this study, the Community Multi-scale Air Quality modeling system (CMAQ5.0) coupled with an in-line windblown dust model was used to simulate the formation, spatial and temporal characteristics of this dust event, and analyze its impacts on deposition and photochemistry. The threshold friction velocity for loose smooth surface in the dust model was revised based on Chinese data to improve the model performance. The comparison between predictions and observations indicates the revised model can reproduce the transport and pollution of the event. The simulation results show that the dust event was affected by formation and transport of Mongolian cyclone and cold air. Totally about 695 kt dust particles (PM10) were emitted in Xinjiang Province and Mongolia during 28 to 30 April, the dust band swept northern, eastern China and then arrived in the YRD region on 1 May 2011. The transported dust particles increased the mean surface layer concentrations of PM10 in the YRD region by 372% during 1 to 6 May and the impacts weakened from north to south due to the removal of dust particles along the path. Accompanied by high PM concentration, the dry deposition, wet deposition and total deposition of PM10 in the YRD reached 184.7 kt, 172.6 kt and 357.32 kt, respectively. These deposited particles are very harmful because of their impacts on urban environment as well as air quality and human health when resuspending in the atmosphere. Due to the impacts of mineral dust on atmospheric photolysis, the concentrations of O3 and OH were reduced by 1.5% and 3.1% in the whole China, and by 9.4% and 12.1% in the YRD region, respectively. The work of this manuscript is meaningful for understanding the dust emissions in China as well as for the application of CMAQ in Asia. It is also helpful to understand the formation mechanism and impacts of dust pollution in the YRD.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 6167-6183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junlan Feng ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Shanshan Li ◽  
Jingbo Mao ◽  
Allison P. Patton ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the megacity of Shanghai are host to one of the busiest port clusters in the world; the region also suffers from high levels of air pollution. The goal of this study was to estimate the contributions of shipping to regional emissions, air quality, and population exposure and to characterize the importance of the geographic spatiality of shipping lanes and different types of ship-related sources for the baseline year of 2015, which was prior to the implementation of China's Domestic Emission Control Areas (DECAs) in 2016. The WRF-CMAQ model, which combines the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) and the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, was used to simulate the influence of coastal and inland-water shipping, port emissions and ship-related cargo transport on air quality and on the population-weighted concentrations (which is a measure of human exposure). Our results showed that the impact of shipping on air quality in the YRD was primarily attributable to shipping emissions within 12 NM (nautical miles) of shore, but emissions coming from the coastal area between 24 and 96 NM still contributed substantially to ship-related PM2.5 concentrations in the YRD. The overall contribution of ships to the PM2.5 concentration in the YRD could reach 4.62 µg m−3 in summer when monsoon winds transport shipping emissions onshore. In Shanghai city, inland-water going ships were major contributors (40 %–80 %) to the shipping impact on urban air quality. Given the proximity of inland-water ships to the urban populations of Shanghai, the emissions of inland-water ships contributed more to population-weighted concentrations. These research results provide scientific evidence to inform policies for controlling future shipping emissions; in particular, in the YRD region, expanding the boundary of 12 NM from shore in China's current DECA policy to around 100 NM from shore would include most of shipping emissions affecting air pollutant exposure, and stricter fuel standards could be considered for the ships on inland rivers and other waterways close to residential regions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1423
Author(s):  
Debin Lu ◽  
Wanliu Mao ◽  
Lilin Zheng ◽  
Wu Xiao ◽  
Liang Zhang ◽  
...  

The lockdown of cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) during COVID-19 has provided many natural and typical test sites for estimating the potential of air pollution control and reduction. To evaluate the reduction of PM2.5 concentration in the YRD region by the epidemic lockdown policy, this study employs big data, including PM2.5 observations and 29 independent variables regarding Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), climate, terrain, population, road density, and Gaode map Point of interesting (POI) data, to build regression models and retrieve spatially continuous distributions of PM2.5 during COVID-19. Simulation accuracy of multiple machine learning regression models, i.e., random forest (RF), support vector regression (SVR), and artificial neural network (ANN) were compared. The results showed that the RF model outperformed the SVR and ANN models in the inversion of PM2.5 in the YRD region, with the model-fitting and cross-validation coefficients of determination R2 reached 0.917 and 0.691, mean absolute error (MAE) values were 1.026 μg m−3 and 2.353 μg m−3, and root mean square error (RMSE) values were 1.413 μg m−3, and 3.144 μg m−3, respectively. PM2.5 concentrations during COVID-19 in 2020 have decreased by 3.61 μg m−3 compared to that during the same period of 2019 in the YRD region. The results of this study provide a cost-effective method of air pollution exposure assessment and help provide insight into the atmospheric changes under strong government controlling strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 7872
Author(s):  
Yijia Huang ◽  
Jiaqi Zhang ◽  
Jinqun Wu

Rapid urbanization has led to a growing number of environmental challenges in large parts of China, where the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomerations serve as a typical example. To evaluate the relationship between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization in 26 cities of the YRD, this study revisited the environmental sustainability assessment (ESA) by combining the metrics of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries at the city level, and then integrated the footprint-boundary ESA framework into decoupling analysis. The results demonstrated considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the environmental sustainability of water use, land use, carbon emissions, nitrogen emissions, phosphorus emissions and PM2.5 emissions across the YRD cities during the study period 2007–2017. Decoupling analysis revealed a positive sign that more than half of the 26 cities had achieved the decoupling of each category of environmental sustainability gaps from urbanization since 2014, especially for nitrogen and phosphorus emissions. On the basis of ESA and decoupling analysis, all the cities were categorized into six patterns, for which the optimal pathways towards sustainable development were discussed in depth. Our study will assist policy makers in formulating more tangible and differentiated policies to achieve decoupling between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ka Lok Chan ◽  
Zhuoru Wang ◽  
Aijun Ding ◽  
Klaus-Peter Heue ◽  
Yicheng Shen ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this paper, we present long term observations of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and formaldehyde (HCHO) in Nanjing using a Multi-AXis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) instrument. Ground based MAX-DOAS measurements were performed from April 2013 to February 2017. The MAX-DOAS measurements of NO2 and HCHO vertical column densities (VCDs) are used to validate OMI satellite observations over Nanjing. The comparison shows that the OMI observations of NO2 correlate well with the MAX-DOAS data with Pearson correlation coefficient (R) of 0.91. However, OMI observations are on average a factor of 3 lower than the MAX-DOAS measurements. Replacing the a priori NO2 profiles by the MAX-DOAS profiles in the OMI NO2 VCD retrieval would increase the OMI NO2 VCDs by ~ 30 % with correlation nearly unchanged. The comparison result of MAX-DOAS and OMI observations of HCHO VCD shows a good agreement with R of 0.75 and the slope of the regression line is 0.99. We developed a new technique to assemble the source contribution map using backward trajectory analysis. The age weighted backward propagation approach is applied to the MAX-DOAS measurements of NO2 and HCHO to reconstruct the spatial distribution of NO2 and HCHO over the Yangtze River Delta during summer and winter time. The reconstructed NO2 fields show a distinct agreement with OMI satellite observations. However, due to the short atmospheric lifetime of HCHO, the backward propagated HCHO data does not show a strong spatial correlation with the OMI HCHO observations. The result shows the MAX-DOAS measurements are sensitive to the air pollution transportation in the Yangtze River Delta, indicating the air quality in Nanjing is significantly influenced by regional transportation of air pollutants. The MAX-DOAS data are also used to evaluate the effectiveness of air pollution control measures implemented during the Youth Olympic Games 2014. The MAX-DOAS data show a significant reduction of ambient aerosol, NO2 and HCHO (30 %–50 %) during the Youth Olympic Games. Our results provide a better understanding of the transportation and sources of pollutants in over the Yangtze River Delta as well as the effect of emission control measures during large international event, which are important for the future design of air pollution control policies.


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