Urban Air Quality Studies in Mongolia: Pollution Characteristics and Future Research Needs

Abstract

For the last decades, Mongolia has seen an extensive escalation in population growth, urbanization, and industrialization, together with great increase in mining and usage of vehicles. As a result, a substantial increase has taken place in the types and number of emission sources of air pollutants, especially in urban areas. During the cold season, air pollution level in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, is frequently ranked as the highest in the world. However, due to the lack of air quality management, the country is suffering from a deterioration of air quality.Despite the worse air pollution situation, due to insufficient research capacity of the country, to date, research works on characteristics of air pollution have mainly been based on current capability and/or collaboration with foreign institutes. The research gap in this area necessitates numerous investigations, which could have great importance in developing mitigating strategies and minimizing the adverse impact of air pollution on local and regional scales. This paper reviews previously available studies and reports in international scientific journals on air quality in Mongolia. Based on the existing research works, future needs of studies on ambient air pollution in Mongolia are suggested.

Assessment of COVID-19 Impacts on Air Quality in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Based on Terrestrial and Sentinel-5P TROPOMI Data

“…After a decade of the severe air pollution problem, a notable reduction in air pollution in Ulaanbaatar is seen after introducing upgraded briquette fuel since winter 2019-2020 (Ganbat et al, 2020, Soyol-Erdene et al, 2021. However, the PM concentrations in winter 2019-2020 still exceeded the national air quality standard levels.…”

Utilizing Low-Cost Sensors to Monitor Indoor Air Quality in Mongolian Gers

“…These measures, however, have not resulted in significant improvements in indoor air quality [ 12 ]. Further studies have been conducted to explore alternative approaches for reducing coal combustion, including the implementation of better insulation techniques for the gers [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. In the past, PM 2.5 levels in Mongolia have been extremely high, exceeding World Health Organization (WHO) standards by 6.8 times based on 24-h averages [ 16 ].…”

Application of machine learning and statistical modeling to identify sources of air pollutant levels in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

“…29 Similar projects were also launched in Glasgow, 30 San Francisco, 31 Paris, 32 and Mongolia. 33 More recently, our research group launched a pilot project in Kitchener, Ontario (ON), Canada using five AQMesh multisensor pods distributed near different elementary schools to assess local air quality across different locations in the network relative to the provincial reference station located in a city park. 34 Our first published study highlighted the difference in pollutant levels among different locations relative to the reference station and analyzed the effect of the wildfires season on local air quality.…”