As the foremost economic zone in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region has recently been experiencing more frequent haze events, resulting in dramatic damages to human and ecosystem health.
As the foremost economic zone in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region has recently been experiencing more frequent haze events, resulting in dramatic damages to human and ecosystem health.
Anthropogenic aerosol emissions play a key role in affecting the formation of haze events. However, aside from local sources of pollution, some studies have found that external and preceding climate drivers, such as Arctic sea ice and subtropical western Pacific sea surface temperature, are also influential factors. However, most research has mainly been confined to analyzing the effects on haze pollution in the Northern Hemisphere, with few considering the Southern Hemisphere.
“We found that the December sea surface temperature in the tropical Indian Ocean has a significant positive correlation with the number of haze days in January over the Yangtze River Delta region, especially during 1999–2017,” says Dr. YIN Zhicong, a Professor at Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology and corresponding author of a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.
YIN and his team used observational analyses and numerical experiments to investigate the meteorological conditions associated with haze pollution, with the main emphasis placed upon the impacts of the preceding sea surface temperature in the tropical Indian Ocean.
Read more at Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Image: A playground at Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology during a haze pollution
episode. (Creidt: Yuyan Li)
