Elsevier

Atmospheric Environment

Volume 41, Issue 3, January 2007, Pages 480-492
Atmospheric Environment

Air quality during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.08.046Get rights and content

Abstract

China is taking major steps to improve Beijing's air quality for the 2008 Olympic Games. However, concentrations of fine particulate matter and ozone in Beijing often exceed healthful levels in the summertime. Based on the US EPA's Models-3/CMAQ model simulation over the Beijing region, we estimate that about 34% of PM2.5 on average and 35–60% of ozone during high ozone episodes at the Olympic Stadium site can be attributed to sources outside Beijing. Neighboring Hebei and Shandong Provinces and the Tianjin Municipality all exert significant influence on Beijing's air quality. During sustained wind flow from the south, Hebei Province can contribute 50–70% of Beijing's PM2.5 concentrations and 20–30% of ozone. Controlling only local sources in Beijing will not be sufficient to attain the air quality goal set for the Beijing Olympics. There is an urgent need for regional air quality management studies and new emission control strategies to ensure that the air quality goals for 2008 are met.

Introduction

Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Games of the XXIX Olympiad from August 8–24, 2008. This is an event of paramount importance to China, and great steps are being taken to ensure its complete success. Of concern both within and outside China is the air quality that athletes and attendees will face during the Games. China wishes to ensure a healthful and enjoyable experience for all. However, air pollution levels in the summertime in Beijing can be high. Significant improvements in air quality in China were achieved during the late 1990s and early 2000s (Hao and Wang, 2005), but with reinvigorated economic growth and continued expansion of the transportation system, some of those gains have been lost in the last few years.

The Beijing and National governments are introducing many new pollution control measures designed to reduce local emissions in Beijing, as specified by the Beijing Organizing Committee of the XXIX Olympic Games (BOCOG) (2004). Undoubtedly, by August 2008, local sources of air pollution will be considerably fewer than they are today. However, there is a concern that much of the air pollution experienced in Beijing is regional in nature and not attributable to local sources. Thus, control measures implemented only in Beijing may not reduce ambient pollutant concentrations to acceptable levels. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of sources outside Beijing to air pollution levels in summertime Beijing. We consider two of the most important regional and urban air pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O3). We examine the contributions of neighboring provinces and suggest priorities for addressing regional air pollution concerns.

Fig. 1 shows the locations of the Beijing and Tianjin Municipalities that contain the cities of Beijing (population 11.5 million) and Tianjin (9.3 million) (National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS), 2004). Surrounding them are three large provinces—Hebei, Shandong, and Shanxi—all heavily populated, urbanized, and industrialized. Also shown in Fig. 1 are the four large urban centers of Shijiazhuang (9.1 million), Qingdao (7.2 million), Jinan (5.8 million), and Taiyuan (3.3 million), which are typical industrial, coal-burning cities within several hundred kilometers of Beijing. In these areas, emission controls on stationary sources and vehicles are not as stringent as in Beijing, and emissions are high. Rural biomass burning has also been identified as an important contributor to fine PM concentrations in Beijing (Duan et al., 2004). Emissions from these nearby sources, as well as more distant ones, undergo chemical reactions during transport on the prevailing winds, forming secondary species that pervade the entire region and add to the local pollution in Beijing (Han et al., 2005; Hatakeyama et al., 2005; Luo et al., 2000; Mauzerall et al., 2000). Episodic dust storms in the springtime also contribute to the PM loading in Beijing (Dillner et al., 2006; Xie et al., 2005).

Fine PM, here considered as either PM2.5 (particles with average diameters ⩽2.5 micrometers [μm]) or PM10 (diameters ⩽10 μm), is directly emitted from power plants, motor vehicles, industrial facilities, and other sources. It is also formed photo-chemically from reactions of primary gaseous species in the atmosphere, e.g., ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, and secondary organic aerosols formed from reactions among sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and ammonia (Lun et al., 2003; Tang et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2000). In summertime, the high temperatures and high humidity promote the photochemical formation of ozone (Xiao and Zhu, 2003), exacerbated by the heat island effect (Lin and Yu, 2005). Fine PM and ozone are considered to be the most serious air pollutants of concern in the US today, as well as in most metropolitan areas around the world. It is imperative to reduce the concentrations of these two pollutants during the Olympic Games.

Section snippets

Background

In 1997 the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) revised the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) that have been established to protect public health and the environment. The revised PM standards include an annual average PM2.5 standard of 15 μg m−3 and a daily average PM2.5 standard of 65 μg m−3, in addition to an annual PM10 standard of 50 μg m−3 and a daily average PM10 standard of 150 μg m−3 (US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), 1997a). China also has ambient air quality

Methodology

In this present work, Beijing's air quality is simulated using the Models-3/Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system (Version 4.4), developed by the US EPA (Byun and Ching, 1999). The CMAQ model has received many applications and evaluations in the US and other countries for regional- and urban-scale air quality simulations, integrating a number of air quality issues (particulate matter, ozone, acid deposition, visibility, air toxics, etc.) into a so-called “one-atmosphere”

Results

The model was used to simulate PM2.5 and ozone concentrations in Beijing and surrounding areas. Fig. 4 (top two frames) shows base-case simulations of concentrations in the 4-km model domain. A second model case was run in which all man-made emissions in Beijing were removed (natural emissions such as biogenic VOC emissions were not removed). The resulting PM2.5 and ozone concentrations are shown in the center two frames of Fig. 4. These two center frames can be considered to represent the

Conclusions

There is no doubt that the measures planned to limit air pollution in Beijing will greatly improve Beijing's air quality for the period of the 2008 Olympic Games. But will they be sufficient to achieve the stated objectives? This study shows that, even in the limit that Beijing generates no man-made emissions, levels of fine PM and ozone could still be high and could exceed healthful levels under unfavorable meteorological conditions. Because the limit of zero emissions cannot be achieved in

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of the US EPA's Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants (ICAP) project. The authors also thank Joe Paisie of US EPA for permission to use the photographs in Fig. 2.

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