Characterization of air pollution in urban areas of Yangtze River Delta, China

Abstract

The hallmark of development in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) of East China has been sprawling urbanization. However, air pollution is a significant problem in these urban areas. In this paper, we investigated and analyzed the air pollution index (API) in four cities (Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Ningbo) in the YRD from 2001 to 2012. We attempted to empirically examine the relationship between meteorological factors and air quality in the urban areas of the YRD. According to the monitoring data, the API in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou slightly declined and that in Ningbo increased over the study period. We analyzed the inter-annual, seasonal, and monthly variations of API, from which we found that the air quality had different temporal changes in the four cities. It was indicated that air quality was poor in winter and spring and best in summer. Furthermore, different weather conditions affected air quality level. The wind direction was considered as an important and influential factor to air pollution, which has an impact on the accumulating or cleaning processes of pollutants. The air quality was influenced by the different wind directions that varied with seasons and cities.

Spatiotemporal Variations of Particulate and Gaseous Pollutants and Their Relations to Meteorological Parameters: The Case of Xiangyang, China

“…Second, some meteorological factors, such as precipitations, sunshine durations and the PBLH, have not been participated in the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient test in our study as unable to be synchronously measured by those 16 stations. Nevertheless, they can directly and indirectly disrupt the pollution concentration that was demonstrated by other studies [21,[49][50][51][52]. Therefore, more monitoring parameters of ground stations and a precise measurement of PBLH for Xiangyang are well needed.…”

A Data-Driven Approach to Identify Major Air Pollutants in Shanghai Port Area and Their Contributing Factors

“…In such circumstances, clean air also struggles to flow into the port area along the river's path due to the obstruction caused by the wind. This airflow obstruction, formed when the wind direction aligns parallel to the river's flow, affects the dispersion of pollutants and the entry of clean air, consequently impacting the air quality in the port area under specific meteorological conditions [46,47].…”

Tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub>, SO<sub>2</sub>, and HCHO over the East China Sea, using ship-based MAX-DOAS observations and comparison with OMI and OMPS satellite data

“…It contains a UV spectrometer covering the wavelength range between 300 and 380 nm with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 1 nm. It has a high spatial resolution of 50 × 50 km 2 and high time resolution of daily global coverage (Dittman et al, 2002;Seftor et al, 2014;González Abad et al, 2016). Its Equator crossing time in the ascending node is 13:30 LT.…”