Process analysis of regional aerosol pollution during spring in the Pearl River Delta region, China

Fan, Qingxia; Lan, Jing; Liu, Yiming; Wang, Xuemei; Chan, Pak Wai; Hong, Yongfeng; Feng, Yu; Liu, Yexin; Zeng, Yanyan; Liang, Guixiong

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.09.013

Cited by 51 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In order to better understand the properties of atmospheric aerosols and their impacts, chemical transport models (CTMs) can be a critical tool, and they have been drawn up and applied to study various air pollution issues all over the world. For example, a fully coupled online Weather Research and Forecasting/Chemistry (WRF/Chem) model was developed by Grell et al (2005) and was used to study the aerosol-radiation-cloud feedbacks on meteorology and air quality (Gao et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015a;Qiu et al, 2017); a Models-3 Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system was designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (Byun and Ching, 1999) and was carried out to address acid deposition, visibility and haze pollution issues (Zhang et al, 2006;Han et al, 2014;Fan et al, 2015); a nested air quality prediction model system (NAQPMS) was developed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Science (IAP/CAS) (Wang et al, 2001) for targeting at reproducing the transport and evolution of atmospheric pollutants in Asia (Li et al, 2012a;Wang et al, 2013c;Li et al, 2017a); a global three-dimensional chemical transport model (GEOS-CHEM) was first presented by Bey et al (2001) and was applied to study the source sector contribution, long-range transport and the prediction of future change in ozone and aerosol concentrations (Liao et al, 2006;Li et al, 2016b;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MICS-Asia III: Multi-model comparison and evaluation of aerosol over East Asia

Chen¹,

Gao²,

Zhang³

et al. 2019

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Abstract. Fourteen chemical transport models (CTMs) participate in the MICS&#8211;Asia Phase III Topic 1. Their simulation results are compared with each other and with an extensive set of measurements, aiming to evaluate the current multi&#8211;scale air quality models&#8217; ability in simulating aerosol species and to document similarities and differences among model performances, also to reveal the characteristics of aerosol chemical components over big cities in East Asia. In general, all participant models can reproduce the spatial distribution and seasonal variability of aerosol concentrations in the year 2010, and multi&#8211;model ensemble mean (EM) shows better performance than most individual models, with Rs ranging from 0.65 (NO3&#8722;) to 0.83 (PM2.5). Underestimations of BC (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;&#8722;17.0&#8201;%), SO42&#8722; (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;&#8722;19.1&#8201;%) and PM10 (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;&#8722;32.6&#8201;%) are simulated by EM, but positive biases are shown in NO3&#8722; (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;4.9&#8201;%), NH4+ (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;14.0&#8201;%) and PM2.5 (NMB&#8201;=&#8201;4.4&#8201;%). Simulation results of BC, OC, SO42&#8722;, NO3&#8722; and NH4+ among CTMs are in good agreements, especially over polluted areas, such as the eastern China and the northern part of India. But large coefficients of variations (CV&#8201;>&#8201;1.5) are also calculated over arid and semi&#8211;arid regions. This poor consistency among CTMs may attribute to their different processing capacities for dust aerosols. According to the simulation results in the six Asian cities from EM, different air&#8211;pollution control plans should be made due to their different major air pollutants in different seasons. Although a more considerable capacity for reproducing the concentrations of aerosol chemical compositions and their variation tendencies is shown in current CTMs by comparing statistics (e.g. RMSE and R) between MICS&#8211;Asia Phase II and Phase III, detailed process analysis and a fully understanding of the source&#8211;receptor relationship in each process may be helpful to explain and to reduce large diversities of simulated aerosol concentrations among CTMs, and these may be the potential development directions for future modeling studies in East Asia.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MICS-Asia III: Multi-model comparison and evaluation of aerosol over East Asia

Chen¹,

Gao²,

Zhang³

et al. 2019

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“…Anthropogenic activities associated with rapidly developed industrialization and urbanization have been leading to a sustained increase in the amounts of atmospheric pollutants, especially in the fast-developing countries (IPCC, 2013). As one of the largest emission sources of aerosols and their precursors, China has been suffering from serious air pollution for years (Lei et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011), with severe haze events frequently occurring in winter, especially over large urban agglomerations, such as the North China Plain (NCP) (Han et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2015), the Yangtze River Delta area (YRD) (Ding et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016a), the Pearl River Delta area (PRD) (Fan et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2018b), and the Sichuan Basin (SCB) (Zhao et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019). During severe haze events, the observed maximum hourly surface-layer PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 µm or less) concentration exceeded 1000 µg m -3 (Wang et al, 2013b;Sun et al, 2016;Li et al, 2017a), which could significantly influence visibility (Li et al, 2014), radiation budget (Steiner et al, 2013), atmospheric circulation (Jiang et al, 2017), cloud properties (Unger et al, 2009), and even human health (Guo et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the formation and evolution mechanisms of severe haze pollution in Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei region by using process analysis

Chen¹,

Zhu²,

Liu³

et al. 2019

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Abstract. Fine&#8211;particle pollution associated with haze threatens human health, especially in the North China Plain, where extremely high PM2.5 concentrations were frequently observed during winter. In this study, the WRF&#8211;Chem model coupled with an improved integrated process analysis scheme was used to investigate the formation and evolution mechanisms of a haze event happened over Beijing&#8211;Tianjin&#8211;Hebei (BTH) in December 2015, including examining the contributions of local emission and outside transport to the absolute PM2.5 concentration in BTH, and the contributions of each detailed physical or chemical process to the variations in the PM2.5 concentration. The influence mechanisms of aerosol radiative forcing (including aerosol direct and indirect effects) were also examined by using the process analysis. During the aerosol accumulation stage (December 20&#8211;22, Stage_1), the average near&#8211;surface PM2.5 concentration in BTH was 250.0&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3, which was contributed by local emission of 42.3&#8201;% and outside transport of 36.6&#8201;%. During the aerosol dispersion stage (December 23&#8211;27, Stage_2), the average concentration of PM2.5 was 107.9&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3. The contribution of local emission increased to 50.9&#8201;%, while the contribution of outside transport decreased to 24.3&#8201;%. The 24&#8211;h change (23:00LST minus 00:00LST) in the near&#8211;surface PM2.5 concentration was +50.4&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 during Stage_1 and &#8722;41.5&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 during Stage_2. Contributions of aerosol chemistry process and vertical mixing process to the 24&#8211;h change were +43.8 (+17.9) &#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 and &#8722;161.6 (&#8722;221.6) &#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 for Stage_1 (Stage_2), respectively. Small differences in contributions from other processes were found between Stage_1 and Stage_2, such as advection process, cloud chemistry process, and so on. Therefore, the PM2.5 increase over BTH during haze formation stage (Stage_1) was mainly attributed to strong production by aerosol chemistry process and weak removal by vertical mixing process. When aerosol radiative feedback was considered, the 24&#8211;h PM2.5 increase was enhanced by 9.6 &#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 during Stage_1, which could be mainly attributed to the contributions of vertical mixing process (+39.8&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3), advection process (&#8722;38.6&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3) and aerosol chemistry process (+5.1&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3). The restrained vertical mixing could be the primary reason for the enhancement in near&#8211;surface PM2.5 increase when aerosol radiative forcing was considered.

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“…Like the temperature, the simulated relative humidity was also slightly under-predicted and had a high correlation coefficient with the observation. The simulated wind speed at a height of 10 m was slightly overestimated by about 0.5 m s -1 due to the underestimation of the effects of urban topography in the WRF model and was often found in other WRF modeling studies (Fan et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2016). The WRF model faithfully reproduces surface pressure for 5 years with 160 low biases and high correlation coefficients.…”

Section: Experiments Settingmentioning

confidence: 63%

Worsening urban ozone pollution in China from 2013 to 2017 – Part 1: The complex and varying roles of meteorology

Liu¹,

Wang²

2020

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Abstract. China has suffered from increasing levels of ozone pollution in urban areas despite the implementation of various stringent emission reduction measures since 2013. In this study, we conducted numerical experiments with an up-to-date regional chemical transport model to assess the contribution of the changes in meteorological conditions and anthropogenic emissions to the summer ozone level from 2013 to 2017 in various regions of China. The model can faithfully reproduce the observed meteorological parameters and air pollutant concentrations and capture the increasing trend in the surface maximum daily 8-hour average (MDA8) ozone (O3) from 2013 to 2017. The emission control measures implemented by the government induced a decrease in MDA8 O3 levels in rural areas but an increase in urban areas. The meteorological influence on the ozone trend varied by region and by year and could be comparable to or even more significant than the impact of changes in anthropogenic emissions. Meteorological conditions can modulate the ozone concentration via direct (e.g., increasing reaction rates at higher temperatures) and indirect (e.g., increasing biogenic emissions at higher temperatures) effects. As an essential source of volatile organic compounds that contributes to ozone formation, the variation in biogenic emissions during summer varied across regions and was mainly affected by temperature. China’s midlatitude areas (25° N to 40° N) experienced a significant decrease in MDA8 O3 due to a decline in biogenic emissions, especially for the Yangtze River Delta and Sichuan Basin regions in 2014 and 2015. In contrast, in northern (north of 40° N) and southern (south of 25° N) China, higher temperatures after 2013 led to an increase in MDA8 O3 concentrations via an increase in biogenic emissions. We also assessed the individual effects of changes in temperature, specific humidity, wind field, planetary boundary layer height, clouds, and precipitation on ozone levels from 2013 to 2017. The results show that the wind field change made a significant contribution to the increase in surface ozone over China by transporting the ozone downward from the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. The long-range transport of ozone and its precursors outside the modeling domain also contributed to the increase in MDA8 O3 in China, especially on the Tibetan Plateau (an increase of 1 to 4 ppbv). Our study represents the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the impact of changes in meteorology on ozone across China and highlights the importance of considering meteorological variations when assessing the effectiveness of emission control on changes in the ozone levels in recent years.

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Process analysis of regional aerosol pollution during spring in the Pearl River Delta region, China

Cited by 51 publications

References 22 publications

MICS-Asia III: Multi-model comparison and evaluation of aerosol over East Asia

MICS-Asia III: Multi-model comparison and evaluation of aerosol over East Asia

Assessing the formation and evolution mechanisms of severe haze pollution in Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei region by using process analysis

Worsening urban ozone pollution in China from 2013 to 2017 – Part 1: The complex and varying roles of meteorology

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