With rapid industrialization and urbanization over the past decades, China has experienced widespread air pollution induced by fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm or less (PM2.5). To protect human health and meet the newly implemented annual PM2.5 target (less than 35 µg m-3), great efforts are needed to reduce emissions effectively. It is, therefore, essential to understand how future PM2.5 concentrations are affected by changes in anthropogenic emissions.
With rapid industrialization and urbanization over the past decades, China has experienced widespread air pollution induced by fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm or less (PM2.5). To protect human health and meet the newly implemented annual PM2.5 target (less than 35 µg m-3), great efforts are needed to reduce emissions effectively. It is, therefore, essential to understand how future PM2.5 concentrations are affected by changes in anthropogenic emissions.
Researchers from Institute of Atmospheric Physics and their co-authors, by using a global chemical transport and future emission scenarios (the representative concentration pathways, RCPs), projected that by 2030 wintertime (summertime) PM2.5 concentrations averaged over Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Sichuan Basin will be 49–56 (31–40), 40–50 (23–29), 22–27 (8–11), and 56–68 (19–24) µg m-3, respectively, with the ranges of PM2.5 concentrations obtained on the basis of the four RCPs.
“In consideration of annual PM2.5 target, controlling PM2.5 pollution in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Sichuan Basin will be challenging.” said LIAO Hong, who is the corresponding author of this research published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. “In these two regions, it will take at least two decades to achieve the annual PM2.5 target under the RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios, and PM2.5 concentrations will keep increasing under RCP6.0.”
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Photo Credits: Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
