Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in China at a city level

By Yan-lin Zhang, F. Cao. Scientific Reports, 2015

899 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study presents one of the first long term datasets including a statistical summary of PM2.5 concentrations obtained from one-year monitoring in 190 cities in China. We found only 25 out of 190 cities could meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards of China and the population-weighted mean of PM2.5 in Chinese cities are 61 μg/m3, ~3 times as high as global population-weighted mean, highlighting a high health risk. PM2.5 concentrations are generally higher in north than in south regions due to relative large PM emissions and unfavorable meteorological conditions for pollution dispersion. A remarkable seasonal variability of PM2.5 is observed with the highest during the winter and the lowest during the summer. Due to the enhanced contributions from dust particles and open biomass burning, high PM2.5 abundances are also found in the spring (in Northwest and West Central China) and autumn (in East China), respectively. In addition, we found the lowest and highest PM2.5 often occurs in the afternoon and evening hours, respectively, associated with daily variation of the boundary layer depth and anthropogenic emissions. The diurnal distribution of the PM2.5-to-CO ratio consistently displays a pronounced peak during the afternoon periods, reflecting a significant contribution of secondary PM formation.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Environmental Engineering, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/167a7e63ec828874ab354446383864c6d4f435a1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atmospheric Science

1. Huanfeng Shen
2. Qiangqiang Yuan
3. Chao Zeng
4. Guohui Li
5. Renyi Zhang
6. Liangpei Zhang
7. Bo Du

In Environmental Engineering

1. Ming Zhang
2. Lei Jiang
3. Chao Zeng
4. Yaobin Liu
5. Huanfeng Shen
6. Wenwen Wang
7. Liangpei Zhang
8. Muhammad Shahbaz

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. Wenwen Wang
2. Renyi Zhang
3. Ming Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• Air pollution in China: Status and spatiotemporal variations. (2017, background): “5/PM10 was slightly higher inwinter than those in other seasons (Zhang and Cao, 2015).”
• Point-surface fusion of station measurements and satellite observations for mapping PM 2.5 distribution in China: Methods and assessment (2016, background): “5 pollution problem (Peng et al., 2016; Zhang and Cao, 2015).”
• Quantifying the spatial heterogeneity influences of natural and socioeconomic factors and their interactions on air pollution using the geographical detector method: A case study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China (2019, background): “For example, Zhang and Cao (2015) demonstrated that temperature had a catalytic effect on the chemical reactions of precursor pollutants, such as PM2.”
• Using the geographical detector technique to explore the impact of socioeconomic factors on PM2.5 concentrations in China (2019, background): “, 2015), wind direction (Zhang and Cao, 2015), terrain (Vieira-Filho et al.”
• Severe haze in northern China: A synergy of anthropogenic emissions and atmospheric processes (2019, background): “1B), in contrast to considerably declining SO2 and NO2 in the United States and Europe over the past decades.”