Understanding the recent trend of haze pollution in eastern China: roles of climate change

In this paper, the variation and trend of haze pollution in eastern China for winter of 1960–2012 were analyzed. With the overall increasing number of winter haze days in this period, the 5 decades were divided into three sub-periods based on the changes of winter haze days (WHD) in central North Ch...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inAtmospheric chemistry and physics Vol. 16; no. 6; pp. 4205 - 4211
Main Authors Wang, Hui-Jun, Chen, Huo-Po
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 01.04.2016
Copernicus Publications
Subjects
Air pollution
Arctic sea ice
Cardiovascular disease
Climate change
Climate variability
Coal
Economic development
Energy consumption
Environmental aspects
Global temperature changes
Haze
Ice
Local precipitation
Polar environments
Pollutants
Pollution
Pollution effects
Precipitation
Precipitation (Meteorology)
Regions
Sea ice
Studies
Surface wind
Time series
Trends
Winds
Winter
Beijing China
China
Arctic region
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this paper, the variation and trend of haze pollution in eastern China for winter of 1960–2012 were analyzed. With the overall increasing number of winter haze days in this period, the 5 decades were divided into three sub-periods based on the changes of winter haze days (WHD) in central North China (30–40° N) and eastern South China (south of 30° N) for east of 109° E mainland China. Results show that WHD kept gradually increasing during 1960–1979, remained stable overall during 1980–1999, and increased fast during 2000–2012. The author identified the major climate forcing factors besides total energy consumption. Among all the possible climate factors, variability of the autumn Arctic sea ice extent, local precipitation and surface wind during winter is most influential to the haze pollution change. The joint effect of fast increase of total energy consumption, rapid decline of Arctic sea ice extent and reduced precipitation and surface winds intensified the haze pollution in central North China after 2000. There is a similar conclusion for haze pollution in eastern South China after 2000, with the precipitation effect being smaller and spatially inconsistent.
ISSN:1680-7324
1680-7316
1680-7324
DOI:10.5194/acp-16-4205-2016