Does afforestation deteriorate haze pollution in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH), China?

Long, Xinping; Bei, Naifang; Wu, Jiarui; Li, Xia; Feng, Tian; Li, Xing; Zhao, Shuyu; Cao, Junji; Tie, Xuexi; An, Zhisheng; Li, Guohui

doi:10.5194/acp-18-10869-2018

Cited by 24 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Our second hypothesis is that the effect of vegetation growth on NSWS in rural areas is more profound in summer than in winter, because boreal summer (winter) has the highest (lowest) vegetation productivity. A recent study has carried out a month-long simulation using the Weather Research and Forecast model and found that the westerly or northerly wind is decelerated by 0.3-1.5 m s −1 in the western and northwestern Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (mostly rural areas) due to the effects of afforestation (Long et al 2018). However, they did not assess the effects of afforestation for all the seasons.…”

Section: The Seasonality Of Urbanization Impacts On the Observed Windmentioning

confidence: 99%

An analysis of the urbanization contribution to observed terrestrial stilling in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China

Wang

Feng

Zeng

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Decreases in terrestrial near-surface wind speed (NSWS) were documented in many regions over the past decades. Various drivers have been proposed for this terrestrial stilling, such as weakening of ocean-land pressure gradients related to climate change and increased surface roughness linked to vegetation growth; but none have been robustly established as the cause. A plausible reason for this quandary is that the local impact of urbanization on NSWS has been overlooked. Here, we used homogenized NSWS records from in situ weather stations and a satellite-based dynamic urban-rural classification scheme to quantitatively assess the contribution of urbanization to observed terrestrial stilling during 1980-2016 over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China. Results suggested that urbanization contributed approximately 8% to the observed decrease in the regional NSWS in urban areas, implying that urbanization played a minor role in terrestrial stilling, even in this rapidly developing region. The largest NSWS changes related to urbanization occurred in winter, followed by spring, autumn, and summer. Urbanization reduced the days with relatively strong winds but increased the days with light and gentle winds. We found that except for the Japanese 55 year reanalysis (JRA-55) dataset, none of the common reanalysis products reproduced the observed NSWS trends in urban or rural areas. However, this could be because of JRA-55's intrinsic negative bias in NSWS trends over land. Thus, regional terrestrial NSWS trends derived from reanalysis products deserve careful examination.

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Section: The Seasonality Of Urbanization Impacts On the Observed Windmentioning

confidence: 99%

An analysis of the urbanization contribution to observed terrestrial stilling in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China

Wang

Feng

Zeng

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Some studies regarding urban trees suggested that arrangement of trees led to sensible heat reduction and temperature variation [19,48]. Although trees bring positive impact to the environment, especially on the microclimate and thermal comfort, trees can also act as barriers and decrease wind speed, which ultimately will increase heat stress at a pedestrian level [37,46]. Trees also have potential to increase pollutant concentration [45].…”

Section: Treesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Infrastructure as an Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategy - A Review

Balany

Muttil

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Research on urban heat mitigation has been growing in recent years with many of the studies focusing on green infrastructure (GI) as a strategy to mitigate the adverse effects of Urban Heat Island (UHI). This paper aims at presenting a review of the range of findings from GI research for urban heat mitigation through a review of scientific articles published during the years 2009-2019. This research includes a review of the different types of GI and its contribution for urban heat mitigation and human thermal comfort. In addition to analyzing different mitigation strategies, numerical simulation tools that are commonly used are also reviewed. It is seen that ENVI-met is one of the modelling tools that is considered as a reliable tool to simulate different mitigation strategies and hence has been widely used in the recent past. Considering its popularity in urban microclimate studies, this article also provides a review of ENVI-met simulation results that were reported in the reviewed papers. It was observed that the majority of the research was conducted on a limited spatial scale and focused on temperature and human thermal comfort.

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“…However, as the business as usual condition (i.e., without the GLP), the increased lighting demand could cause significant increase in thermal power electricity, and the associated growth of coal consumption for power generation during the past decades. This study was to assess the potential effects induced by the GLP on the severe haze pollution in the NCP (Tie et al, 2017;Long et al, 2018), and also displayed a good example to illustrate that scientific innovation can induce important benefits on environment issues. To assess the impacts of the GLP on the severe air polluted region in China, such as in the NCP, several important tools and data were used in this study, including a regional chemical/dynamical model (WRF-CHEM), satellite data (DMSP/OLS and S-NPP), and surface measurements of air pollutants.…”

Section: The Long-term Ntl Data and Coal Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Green Light Program on haze pollution in the North China Plain, China

Long

Tie

Zhou

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. As the world's largest developing country, China undergoes the ever-increasing demand for electricity during the past few decades. In 1996, China launched the Green Lights Program (GLP), which becomes a national energy conservation activity for saving lighting electricity, as well as an effective reduction of the coal consumption for power generation. Despite of the great success of the GLP, its effects on haze pollution have not been investigated and well understood. This study focused to assess the potential coal-saving induced by the GLP and to estimate the consequent improvements of the haze pollutions in the North China Plain (NCP), because severe haze pollutions often occur in the NCP and a large amount of power plants locate in this region. The estimated potential coal-saving induced by the GLP can reach a massive value of 120&#8211;323 million tons, accounting for 6.7&#8211;18.0&#8201;% of the total coal consumption for thermal power generation in China. In December 2015, there was a massive potential emission reduction of air pollutants from thermal power generation in the NCP, which was estimated to be 20.0&#8211;53.8&#8201;Gg for NOx and 6.9&#8211;18.7&#8201;Gg for SO2. The potential emission reductions induced by the GLP played important roles in the haze formation, because the NOx and SO2 are important precursors for the formation of particles. To assess the impact of the GLP on haze pollution, sensitive studies were conducted by applying a regional chemical/dynamical model (WRF-CHEM). The model results suggest that in the lower limit case of emission reduction, the PM2.5 concentration decreases by 2&#8211;5&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 in large areas of the NCP. In the upper limit case of emission reduction, there was much more remarkable decrease in PM2.5 concentration (4&#8211;10&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3). This study is a good example to illustrate that scientific innovation can induce important benefits on environment issues, such as haze pollution.

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Does afforestation deteriorate haze pollution in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH), China?

Cited by 24 publications

References 67 publications

An analysis of the urbanization contribution to observed terrestrial stilling in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China

An analysis of the urbanization contribution to observed terrestrial stilling in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China

Green Infrastructure as an Urban Heat Island Mitigation Strategy - A Review

Impact of the Green Light Program on haze pollution in the North China Plain, China

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