Local and Regional Contributions to Fine Particle Pollution in Winter of the Yangtze River Delta, China

Abstract

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) is one of the most developed and heavily polluted regions in China. Understanding the origin of fine particles is necessary for policy making on air pollution control in this region. However, the current studies on quantifying the contributions from different emission source regions are limited, especially for winter pollution. In this study, field observations and scenario analysis simulations were performed by using the Weather Research and Forecasting and Community Multi-scale Air Quality (WRF/CMAQ) model to quantify the impacts of local emissions and long-range regional transport in a winter period of 2011. The results indicated that the local contributions were dominant on average in the whole period, especially for slight or medium pollution hours. However, when particle pollution increased, the effects of long-range regional transport significantly increased. The inner-regional effects from Jiangsu and the outerregional effects from the upwind adjacent province, Shandong, are crucial for the YRD region. The dominant contributor could be local accumulation or long-range regional transport, which usually depends on the weather conditions. This study provides a systematic analysis of the characteristics and origins of winter pollution in the YRD according to combined observations and modeling, which is helpful for understanding regional particle pollution formation and policy making on improving air quality in this region.

Evaluation of the effect of regional joint-control measures on changing photochemical transformation: a comprehensive study of the optimization scenario analysis

“…Thirdly, the wind speed is slightly overestimated over the region, with NMB and NME values of 28 % and 33 %, respectively, causing fast dispersion of air pollutants. Overall, these statistics for both the meteorological parameters and simulated PM 2.5 are generally consistent with the results in other published modeling studies (Zheng et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2011;Fu et al, 2016;Li et al, 2015a, b), which suggests that the simulation performance is acceptable.…”

Evaluation on the effect of regional joint control measures in changing photochemical transformation: A comprehensive study of the optimization scenario analysis

“…In general, model predicted data are lower than the observed data with the NMB value of -22% to -30%, the NME value of 45% to 47% and the I value of 0.67 to 0.70 (Table 2). Overall, these statistics for both the meteorological parameters and simulated PM2.5 are generally consistent with the results in other published modelling studies (Zheng et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2011;Fu et al, 2016;Li et al, 2015b;Li et al, 2015a), which suggests that the simulation performance is acceptable.…”

Projection of Air Pollution in Northern China in the Two RCPs Scenarios

“…Furthermore, some studies had attempted to identify the correlation between pollutants and meteorological factors [24,25]. The results have shown that the low planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) [26], the weakening of northerly winds [27], the decrease of relative humidity [28], and the increase of sea level temperature [29] have also led to the increase of winter haze in eastern China.…”