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Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Air Pollution in Chinese Cities

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Abstract

China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization has come at a staggering cost to the environment. In recent years, urban air pollution has been a serious environmental issue in Chinese cities that often hits news headlines in China and abroad. Based on the most recent data available, this paper employs two indices to examine the spatial and temporal patterns of some major air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), zone (O3), inhalable particulate matter (PM10), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), in China’s major cities and city regions. The results show that these pollutants display distinct spatial and seasonal variations. Overall, air pollution is much more serious in northern parts of the country, especially in large cities and a few major urban agglomerations, but we also find concentrations of air pollutants in urban agglomerations in southern China. Seasonally, Chinese cities suffer from air pollution especially PM2.5 pollution most in winter while summer is the cleanest season for most cities. Regional variations exist in composition of leading air pollutants and in influencing factors. Meteorological factors, such as wind speed, precipitation, temperature, air pressure, and relative humidity, often have important impacts on PM2.5 concentration, though their specific contributions vary across different cities. We argue that effective air pollution control policies should be regional in nature, but cross-border cooperation between regional and local governments is essential in order to tackle the problem of air pollution more effectively.

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Notes

  1. To measure a city’s annual air quality, annual average AQI is based on daily averages, while the latter are calculated using original hourly AQI data. If the annual average AQI for every pollutant meets standard (no greater than 100) for a city, then air quality for the city is said to meet standard in that year.

  2. As a frequency measure, the term “city days” refers to the total number of days when daily average concentration of cities falls within a range. That is, city days = \( \sum_{i=1}^{74}{D}_i \), where D i is the number of days when daily average concentration of city i falls within the particular range.

  3. The “three regions” include Jing-Jin-Ji region, Yangtze River Delta region, Pearl River Delta region; the “ten city clusters” include city groups in the following areas: central Liaoning province, Shandong, Wuhan, and surrounding areas, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, Chengdu-Chongqing, west shore of Taiwan Strait, central and northern Shanxi province, Guanzhong (of Shaanxi province), Gan-Ning (including three cities—Lanzhou, Baiyin, and Yinchuan—in Gansu province and Ningxia autonomous region), and Urumqi (in Xinjiang).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. China National Environmental Monitoring Center, Beijing, 100012, China

    Qian Li

  2. University of North Dakota, 221 Centennial Dr., Stop 9020, Grand Forks, ND, 58202, USA

    Enru Wang

  3. China Cleaner Production Center of Light Industry, Beijing, 100012, China

    Tongtong Zhang

  4. Environmental Information Center, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Beijing, 100029, China

    Hao Hu

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  1. Qian Li
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  2. Enru Wang
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  3. Tongtong Zhang
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  4. Hao Hu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Enru Wang.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7 Breaking points of individual air quality index
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Table 8 Chinese AQI: categories, descriptions, and health implications
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Li, Q., Wang, E., Zhang, T. et al. Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Air Pollution in Chinese Cities. Water Air Soil Pollut 228, 92 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-017-3268-x

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