Meteorological Change and Impacts on Air Pollution: Results From North China

Abstract

There have been speculations that the severe air pollution experienced in North China was the act of meteorological change in general and a decreasing northerly wind in particular. We conduct a retrospective analysis on 1979–2016 reanalysis data from ERA‐Interim of European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts over a region in North China to detect meteorological changes over the 38 years. No significant reduction in the northerly wind within the mixing layer is detected. Statistically significant increases are detected in the surface temperature, boundary layer height and dissipation, and significant decreases in relative humidity in the region between the first and second 19‐year periods from 1979 to 2016. We build regression models of PM2.5 on the meteorological variables using data in 2014, 2015, and 2016 to quantify effects of the meteorological changes between the two 19‐year periods on PM2.5 under the emission scenarios of 2014–2016. It is found that despite the warming, dew point temperature had been largely kept under control as the region had gotten dryer. This made the effects of temperature warming largely favorable to PM2.5 reduction as it enhances boundary layer height and dissipation. It is found that the meteorological changes would lead to 1.29% to 2.76% reduction in annual PM2.5 averages with January, March, and December having more than 4% reduction in the 3 years. Thus, the meteorological change in North China had helped alleviate PM2.5 to certain extent and should not be held responsible for the regional air pollution problem.

Radiative Effects of Particular Matters on Ozone Pollution in Six North China Cities

“…We did not consider data above 300 hPa as those pressure levels are well above the boundary layer in all seasons as shown in Figure S2 of Z. Xu et al (2020). We select six 0.5° × 0.5° grids which contain the six CMA sites in the six cities.…”

A spatio‐temporal model for the analysis and prediction of fine particulate matter concentration in Beijing

“…In addition to the variables used in the previous studies, we also consider boundary layer height (BLH) in kilometer, as it mainly influences the vertical dissipation of particulate matter (Miao et al, 2015; Tang et al, 2016). It is collected from ERA‐Interim of the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts at a grid size of 0.125° × 0.125°, with a detailed description of the dataset found in Xu, Chen, and Wu (2020). We depict the spatial locations of the 35 air‐quality monitoring stations along with the 15 weather stations in Figure 1.…”

Potential for Electric Vehicle Adoption to Mitigate Extreme Air Quality Events in China

“…Recent studies suggest that extreme pollution episodes will constitute a disparate share of China's future increases in air quality‐related mortality (Hong et al., 2019). Additionally, some have suggested the underlying meteorological conditions of the formation and persistence of extreme events (L. Zhang et al., 2015) have increased in likelihood due to anthropogenic climate change (Callahan et al., 2019; Cai et al., 2017; Zou et al., 2017, 2020), though others suggest the link is uncertain (Shen et al., 2018; Z. Xu et al., 2020). One such extreme pollution episode occurred in January 2013, when over 600M people across China were exposed to extremely high levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) during a series of pollution episodes (Sheehan et al., 2014).…”

“…Recent studies suggest that extreme pollution episodes will constitute a disparate share of China's future increases in air quality-related mortality (Hong et al, 2019). Additionally, some have suggested the underlying meteorological conditions of the formation and persistence of extreme events (L. Zhang et al, 2015) have increased in likelihood due to anthropogenic climate change (Callahan et al, 2019;Cai et al, 2017;Zou et al, 2017Zou et al, , 2020, though others suggest the link is uncertain (Shen et al, 2018;Z. Xu et al, 2020).…”