“…According to the China Environmental Condition Report by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of The People's Republic of China (MEPPRC), seven of the top ten polluted cities in China in the first 6 months of 2013 -Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Handan, Baoding, Tangshan, Hengshui and Langfang -are located in this region. However, haze pollution and air quality studies in this region, especially modeling and simulation studies, are rare (Wang et al, 2008;Xing et al, 2011) and inadequate compared to the Yangtze River delta and Pearl River delta regions (Westerdahl, et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2009Zhang et al, , 2011Zhang et al, , 2013Quan et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2014a).…”