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Aircraft measurements of SO2, NOx, CO, and O3 over the coastal and offshore area of Yellow Sea of China

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Abstract

In order to investigate long-range transport of the air pollution in the East Asia, air pollutants, including SO2, NOx, CO, and O3, were observed by aircraft measurement over the coastal and offshore area of Yellow Sea of China in April 2011. NOx and SO2 seemed to become moderate in recent years, and the concentrations during the whole observations ranged from 0.49 to 9.57 ppb and from 0.10 to 16.02 ppb, respectively. The high concentrations of CO were measured with an average value of 0.98 ppm. The measured O3 average concentration was 76.25 ppb, which showed a higher level comparing with the results from some previous studies. Most of the results for the concentration values generally followed the typical characteristic of vertical and spatial distribution, which were “low altitude > high altitude” and “land/coastal > sea,” respectively. Transport of polluted air mass from the continent to the aircraft measurement area was confirmed in some days during the observation by the meteorological analysis, while the measurement results supposed to represent the background level of the pollutants in rest days. Additionally, some small-scale air pollution plumes were observed. Significant positive correlations between NOx and SO2 indicated that these two species originated from the same region. On the other hand, good positive correlations between NOx and O3 found during 2-day flight suggested that the O3 formation was probably under “NOx-limited” regime in these days.

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Acknowledgments

This investigation was supported by China Ministry of Environmental Protection’s Special Funds for Scientific Research on Public Welfare (Grant Nos. 201309016 and 201009002), Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41105090 and 20707001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Xiaoyang Yang, Xinhua Wang, Wen Yang, Jun Xu, Lihong Ren, Youjiang He, Zhipeng Bai & Fan Meng

  2. China National Environmental Monitoring Center, Beijing, China

    Bing Liu

  3. Peking University, Beijing, China

    Min Hu

Authors
  1. Xiaoyang Yang
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  2. Xinhua Wang
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  3. Wen Yang
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  4. Jun Xu
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  5. Lihong Ren
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  6. Youjiang He
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  7. Bing Liu
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  8. Zhipeng Bai
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  9. Fan Meng
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  10. Min Hu
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Correspondence to Xinhua Wang.

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Yang, X., Wang, X., Yang, W. et al. Aircraft measurements of SO2, NOx, CO, and O3 over the coastal and offshore area of Yellow Sea of China. Environ Monit Assess 188, 527 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5533-7

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