No abstract

Air pollution caused by atmospheric particulate and gaseous pollutants has drawn broad public concern globally. In this paper, the spatial-temporal distributions of major air pollutants in Shenzhen from March 2013 to February 2014 are discussed. In this study, ground-site monitoring data from 19 monitoring sites was used and spatial interpolation and spatial autocorrelation methods were applied to analyze both spatial and temporal characteristics of air pollutants in Shenzhen City. During the study period, the daily average concentrations of Particulate Matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5 ) ranged from 16-189 µg/m 3 and 10-136 µg/m 3 , respectively, with 13 and 44 over-limit days, indicating that particulate matter was the primary air pollutant in Shenzhen. The highest PM occupation in the polluted air was observed in winter, indicating that fine particulate pollution was most serious in winter. Meanwhile, seasonal agglomeration patterns for six kinds of air pollutants showed that Guangming, Baoan, Nanshan, and the northern part of Longgang were the most polluted areas and PMs were their primary air pollutants. In addition, wind scale and rainfall played an important role in dissipating air pollutant in Shenzhen. The wind direction impacted the air pollution level in Shenzhen in multiple ways: the highest concentrations for all air pollutants all occurred on days with a northeast wind; the second highest ones appeared on the days with no wind. The concentrations on days with north-related winds are higher on average than those of days with south-related winds.

Fireworks are widely used around the world and can cause severe air pollution over a short period of time. Many efforts have been carried out worldwide to reduce the level of firework-generated air pollution, such as limiting the use of fireworks and developing environmentally friendly fireworks. Research has suggested that the use of environmentally friendly charges in fireworks can reduce emissions, although their impact on ambient air quality has not been quantified. Here, we used a chemical transport model to study the benefits of environmentally friendly fireworks in reducing ambient PM2.5 based on a detailed estimation of emissions from fireworks and dense observations available for simulation validation. Our results showed that environmentally friendly fireworks can reduce ambient PM2.5 by ∼50% (in the range of 15–65% with a “central” value of 35% considering uncertainties) compared with traditional fireworks. However, due to a large number of fireworks used, the air quality still significantly deteriorated, and the effect of using twice the amount of environmentally friendly fireworks on air quality would be comparable to the use of traditional fireworks. Our results indicate that environmentally friendly fireworks are not actually “green”. To make them green, the total number of fireworks used at one time must be strictly restricted.

Air pollutants have significant direct and indirect adverse effects on public health. To explore the relationship between air pollutants and meteorological conditions on the hospitalization for respiratory diseases, we collected a whole year of daily major air pollutants’ concentrations from Shenzhen city in 2013, including Particulate Matter (PM10, PM2.5), Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), Sulphur dioxide (SO2), and Carbon monoxide (CO). Meanwhile, we also gained meteorological data. This study collected 109,927 patients cases with diseases of the respiratory system from 98 hospitals. We investigated the influence of meteorological factors on air pollution by Spearman correlation analysis. Then, we tested the short-term correlation between significant air pollutants and respiratory diseases’ hospitalization by Distributed Lag Non-linear Model (DLNM). There was a significant negative correlation between the north wind and NO2 and a significant negative correlation between the south wind and six pollutants. Except for CO, other air pollutants were significantly correlated with the number of hospitalized patients during the lag period. Most of the pollutants reached maximum Relative Risk (RR) with a lag of five days. When the time lag was five days, the annual average of PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2, and O3 increased by 10%, and the risk of hospitalization for the respiratory system increased by 0.29%, 0.23%, 0.22%, 0.25%, and 0.22%, respectively. All the pollutants except CO impact the respiratory system’s hospitalization in a short period, and PM10 has the most significant impact. The results are helpful for pollution control from a public health perspective.

The impacts of weather forecast uncertainties have not been quantified in current air quality forecasting systems. To address this, we developed an efficient 2‐D convolutional neural network‐surface ozone ensemble forecast (2DCNN‐SOEF) system using 2‐D convolutional neural network and weather ensemble forecasts, and we applied the system to 216‐hr ozone forecasts in Shenzhen, China. The 2DCNN‐SOEF demonstrated comparable performance to current operating forecast systems and met the air quality level forecast accuracies required by the Chinese authorities up to 144‐hr lead time. Uncertainties in weather forecasts contributed 38%–54% of the ozone forecast errors at 24‐hr lead time and beyond. The 2DCNN‐SOEF enabled an “ozone exceedance probability” metric, which better represented the risks of air pollution given the range of possible weather outcomes. Our ensemble forecast framework can be extended to operationally forecast other meteorology‐dependent environmental risks globally, making it a valuable tool for environmental management.