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Recent intensification of winter haze in China linked to foreign emissions and meteorology

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
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  1. BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)
  2. UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS
+ Show Author Affiliations

Wintertime aerosol pollution in Northern China has increased over the past several decades as anthropogenic emissions in China have increased, and has increased dramatically since the beginning of the 21st century, but the causes and their quantitative contributions remain uncertain. Here we use an aerosol source tagging capability implemented in a global aerosol-climate model to assess long-term trends of PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 µm in diameter) in Northern China. Our analysis suggests that increasing PM2.5 concentrations due to local emission increases within China were obscured (~13%) by foreign emission reductions between 1980–2000. As foreign emissions stabilized during 2000-2014, their counteracting effect almost disappeared, uncovering China’s pollution potential from domestic emission increases. The meteorology dominated PM2.5 trend during 1990–1996 and also uncovered the pollution potential due to decadal variations in winds. The stabilized foreign emissions together with changing meteorology explain a quarter of the larger increasing trend of PM2.5 since the beginning of the 21st century. Future foreign emissions are not expected to help hiding China’s pollution, reductions in local emissions are the efficient way to improve future air quality in Northern China.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1763365
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-128267
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Spatial and seasonal variations of aerosols over China from two decades of multi-satellite observations – Part 2: AOD time series for 1995–2017 combined from ATSR ADV and MODIS C6.1 and AOD tendency estimations January 2018
Interannual variability and trends of combustion aerosol and dust in major continental outflows revealed by MODIS retrievals and CAM5 simulations during 2003–2017 January 2020
Seasonality in the Δ 33 S measured in urban aerosols highlights an additional oxidation pathway for atmospheric SO 2 January 2019
Climatic Factors and Their Availability in Estimating Long‐Term Variations of Fine Particle Distributions Over East China March 2019
Variability, timescales, and nonlinearity in climate responses to black carbon emissions January 2019
Unraveling driving forces explaining significant reduction in satellite-inferred Arctic surface albedo since the 1980s November 2019
Variations of Haze Pollution in China Modulated by Thermal Forcing of the Western Pacific Warm Pool August 2018

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