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China has made remarkable achievements in reducing carbon emissions in recent years. However, there is still much reduction room before achieving carbon neutrality. In Beijing, the capital of China, it is a strategic choice to respond to global climate change by promoting green and low-carbon development. This paper calculates the carbon dioxide emissions of key industries in Beijing and analyzes the temporal evolution trend of carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions in Beijing before 2030 are predicted based on the grey prediction GM (1,1) and BP neural network model. The effects of factors of carbon dioxide emissions are discussed using the threshold regression model under different economic conditions. The results show that energy consumption intensity, GDP per capita, and the ownership of civil cars have a positive impact on carbon dioxide emissions, while the number of permanent residents and urban green space areas have a negative impact on carbon dioxide emissions. These findings of carbon emission prediction and influencing factors contribute to carbon reduction path design. Related policy implications on carbon emission reduction are put forward from the aspects of promoting industrial upgrading, accelerating the construction of advanced economic structures, optimizing transportation structures, and strengthening green building development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the most concentrated area of human activities, cities consume many natural resources and discharge a large amount of waste into the natural environment, which has a huge environmental impact. Most of the ecological and environmental problems, such as environmental pollution, global climate change, and loss of biodiversity, are related to urban systems. How to coordinate urban development with the urban ecological carrying capacity is related to the destiny of the city itself, and also to whether its surrounding areas can successfully achieve the goal of high environmental quality and sustainable development. At present, the theory and methods of urban ecological carrying capacity research are relatively new, which has caused problems for policy makers in practical applications. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for urban ecological carrying capacity assessment based on the analysis of ecosystem services supply and demand. Combined with multi-source spatial data and spatial model methods, the supply and demand of ecosystem services were spatially quantified. The capital city of China, Beijing, was the case study area for this research. The spatial differentiation of the supply–demand relationship of ecosystem services is formed. The priority areas for ecological carrying capacity improvement at pixel scale and at the administrative level are obtained, respectively. The results show that the first priority area is concentrated in the center of the urban area, accounting for 31.11% of the total area of Beijing. According to the secondary zone and the specific ecosystem service type, the ecological carrying capacity improvement strategy of different zones is proposed. This study provides a new perspective for investigating urban ecological carrying capacity and for identifying the priority areas for ecological carrying capacity improvement, and helps the policy-makers to design tailored policy actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban bio-retention system is meaningful in reducing rainfall runoff and enhancing infiltration capacity. But the moisture migration in bio-retention systems are not clear under climate change. The spatial and temporal distribution of moisture under different rainfall events in bio-retention systems are studied in this paper based on experimental data in Beijing. Richards model is introduced to simulate the spatial and temporal distribution of moisture including pressure head, hydraulic head and water content under different initial and boundary conditions. As a result, we found that from the depth of the node to the lower boundary, the values of pressure head and hydraulic head increase with depth and decrease with time, while the values of water content represent opposite trends relative to the distribution of pressure head and hydraulic head in bio-retention systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The increases of commuting CO 2 emissions are several times larger than the urban size, population, and economics' developments. • Metro services reducing commuting CO 2 emissions near the metro stations is not statistically significant, possibly because the proportions of car users near the metro stations are similar to the two cities' average levels, which is caused by their higher household income and the longer travel time using the metro. • In Beijing, there are the smallest commuting CO 2 emissions in the outer suburbs due to job-housing balances, short distance and large percentage of non-motorized mode uses while the largest commuting CO 2 emissions in the inner sprawl suburbs due to car trips with long distance. Abstract To understand the changing relationships between commuting CO 2 emissions (CCE), travel behavior and urban forms, this paper provides a comparative study between the typical Chinese cities of Beijing (more developed) and Xi'an (rapidly developing). Further, the effects of metro services on reducing CCE were explored, and comparative analysis on CCE between the inner sprawling suburbs and outer suburbs was conducted. It was found that: (i) the increases in CCE are several times larger than the increases in urban size, population, and economic developments; (ii) metro services reducing CCE near metro stations is not statistically significant, maybe because the proportions of car users near the metro stations are similar to the two cities' average levels, which is caused by their higher household income and the longer travel time using the metro; (iii) in Beijing, there are smallest CCE in the outer suburbs due to job-housing balances, short distance and large percentage of non-motorized mode uses while largest CCE in the inner sprawl suburbs due to car trips with long distance. These findings indicate that to cope with the rapidly increasing CCE, more attention should be paid to developing strong industry and real-estate simultaneously; the improvement in the feeder bus and public bicycle systems should also be reinforced to reduce the total travel time of metro users; and satellite cities with job-housing balance are greatly needed. The implications will benefit efforts to reduce CCE and mitigate global climate change, and they also provide empirical evidence and reference values for other global cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For curbing the global climate crisis, China has set an ambitious target of peak carbon emissions by 2030. Beijing, the capital of China, has implemented a carbon reduction policy since 2012. Using the reduced and generalized forms of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), we deduce that both the cubic EKC and the genetic algorithm-based EKC have an N-shape. The first turning point of the three-order EKC occurs around 2011, demonstrating the effectiveness of the carbon reduction policy. However, the time series model predicts that Beijing will reach the second turning point around 2026, when the gross domestic product (GDP) is about CNY 5000 billion and carbon emissions will begin to increase again. Interpretable machine learning is proposed to explore the socio-economic drivers in carbon emissions, indicating that total energy consumption and GDP contribute the most. Therefore, we should accelerate the upgrading of energy consumption and adjust the industrial structure, thus facilitating Beijing to its peak carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural sector is extremely vulnerable to climate change and also plays a very important role in the operation of the entire economic system, leading many studies to evaluate the possible agricultural direct economic damage (ADED) of climate change. However, this damage may have an amplification impact through the intricate industrial linkages that exist among sectors, and this impact may be even greater than the original damage. Therefore, to elucidate the economic cascading effect (ECE) in China caused by ADED and industrial linkage, this paper used the ARIO model to evaluate the total ECE and analyse the differences in the 19 sectors by taking the ADED under future annual mean temperature (AMT) increases of 1–5 °C as the input condition and adjusting the exogenous parameters to enhance the adaptability of the model; the goal was to assess the economic impact of climate change in China. The results show that (i) there is a significant amplifying impact of ECE due to industrial linkage under the influence of warming, ECE will be 4.24–5.25 times that of ADED, and the total economic impact (ADED + ECE) will exceed the GDP of the Chinese capital of Beijing in 2012 when the AMT increases by 1.5 °C, while it will exceed one tenth of China's GDP when it increases by 4 °C. (ii) Manufacturing will be the sector most affected by the industrial linkage under ADED, which accounts for 26.58% of total ECE, followed by agriculture (10.39%) and construction (8.5%). (iii) The decrease in cultivated land area will have a significant impact on the economy; when it is reduced to the minimum demand (1.41% less than 2012), ADED increases by 1.65 times and ECE increases by 2.35 times. This paper aims to provide a new perspective from which to evaluate the economic impact of climate change by studying ECEs behind sectoral interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the effects of climate change on building indoor thermal conditions is of importance for providing a comfortable thermal environment for occupants. Some multi-family dwellings have already been listed as heritage in China (hereinafter referred to as heritage apartments), limiting modifications to the building envelope. However, the effect of climate change on thermal comfort in heritage apartments with a compact interior (i.e. without a living room) built before the 1980s in different Chinese climate zones has seldom been studied. This study focuses on the current and future thermal comfort in two-bedroom heritage apartments in China. The study was conducted for two different Chinese climate zones, that is, a cold climate zone (Beijing), and a hot summer and cold winter climate zone (Shanghai) and both current climate scenarios (typical meteorological years) and future climate scenarios (2050) were used. The results indicate, among other things, increases of 58%–60% and 41%–44% in the predicted average number of overheating hours in 2050 compared to the current climate for the studied bedrooms on the first floor in dwellings in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing has long sought to shape global narratives about China. The Xi Jinping administration not only continued that effort but also added an entirely new dimension: it now seeks to use discourse power, particularly through formulating and promoting strategic narratives, to reshape the international system itself. Drawing upon social identity theory (SIT) and strategic narratives framework, this study shows that Beijing employs a multifaceted narrative strategy to redefine existing norms or create new ones in varied global governance domains. A theoretical framework is presented to explain the strategy and subsequently applied to illustrate China's strategic narratives at the international system level and in three global governance areas, i.e., climate change, human rights, and Internet governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, brownfield is an important resource for land regeneration and restoration targeting to recover its ecosystem function. Landfills, as a type of brownfield distributed in the highly populated areas, occupy massive land resources. The ecological restoration of landfills becomes an engineering approach to achieve multiple effects of society, environment, and economy. This paper aims to monitor and assess the restoration microclimatic effects of landfills restoration in China with remote sensing data and techniques. We selected representative landfill restoration projects, including Nanhaizi Park in Beijing, Nanhu Park in Tangshan, and Tianziling Park in Hangzhou, as the study cases. Using the Landsat imagery, the scenes of the pre-restoration, mid-restoration, and post-restoration were retrieved, and the surface energy balance equation was applied to calculate normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land surface temperature (T s), and evapotranspiration (ET), representing vegetation conditions and hydro-heat microclimate conditions. The study areas are divided into four subzones and extracted the calculated values for statistics and comparison. We defined an indicator of restoration intensity (RI) using the different subzones to the outer contour distance radius and restoration phases to evaluate the spatial-temporal restoration degrees. The spatial pattern dynamics was displayed in the urbanization context in the cases of Beijing and Tangshan. We examined and quantified the relations between RI and the key indicators, NDVI, T s , and ET. The overall results revealed that with higher restoration intensity, NDVI and ET became higher, and T s became lower. It suggested that the ecological restoration on the landfills brought better vegetation, cooling, and humidification effects for the microclimatic environment. Our research has the implications for monitoring and assessing the climatic effects of ecological restoration in the brownfield regeneration in a macroscopic and ecosystem perspective. Unlabelled Image • With satellite dataset, we developed a way to monitor vegetation and microclimatic changes in the restored landfills. • The indicator to quantify the ecological restoration intensity was invented with spatial distance and restoration phase. • Overall, with higher restoration intensity, vegetation and evapotranspiration improved, and surface temperature declined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing pressure from population growth and economic development, northern China (NC) faces a grand challenge of water scarcity, which can be further exacerbated by climatic and societal changes. The South‐to‐North Water Diversion (SNWD) project is designed to mitigate the water scarcity in NC. However, few studies have quantified the impact of the SNWD on water scarcity within the context of climatic and societal changes and its potential effects on economic and agricultural food in the region. We used water supply stress index (WaSSI) to quantify water scarcity within the context of environmental change in NC and developed a method to estimate the economic and agricultural impacts of the SNWD. Focuses were put on alleviating the water supply shortage and economic and agricultural benefits for the water‐receiving NC. We find that societal changes, especially economic growth, are the major contributors to water scarcity in NC during 2009–2099. To completely mitigate the water scarcity of NC, at least an additional water supply of 13 billion m3/year (comparable to the annual diversion water by SNWD Central Route) will be necessary. Although SNWD alone cannot provide the full solution to NC's water shortage in next few decades, it can significantly alleviate the water supply stress in NC (particularly Beijing), considerably increasing the agricultural production (more than 115 Tcal/year) and bringing economic benefits (more than 51 billion RMB/year) through supplying industrial and domestic water use. Additionally, the transfer project could have impacts on the ecological environment in the exporting regions. Key Points: Societal changes, especially economic growth, are the major contributors to water scarcity problem in northern China (NC) during 2009–2099Diverting water from Yangtze River can significantly reduce water scarcity in NC but cannot entirely solve the issue in next few decadesWater diversion can increase agricultural food (115 Tcal/year) and economic benefit (51 billion RMB/year) in NC under global warming of 1.5°C [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has attached a great significance to bringing science to the public—known as kepu (科普, 'science popularization') or kexue chuanbo (科学传播, 'science dissemination')—in recent years, partly in response to its unprecedented push for innovation in science and technology. In 2018, it spent 16 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) on such endeavours, nearly 80% of which was government funding, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Science and Technology. With one science-education venue for every million people, approximately 76 million visits were made to the country's 518 general-science museums and 142 million visits were made to 943 museums dedicated to a specific subject matter, such as the Geological Museum of China. In a forum chaired by National Science Review 's executive editor-in-chief, Mu-ming Poo, scientists, journalists and public-information officers discussed the differences in science communication between China and developed nations, the challenges and opportunities of raising scientific literacy in China, how it has played out in a wide range of controversial topics, from stem-cell research to climate change, and the importance of international collaboration. Tao Deng Director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Hepeng Jia Science journalist and science-communication scholar at Soochow University, Suzhou, China Brian Lin Director of the Editorial Content Strategy, EurekAlert!, American Association of the Advancement of Science, Washington DC, USA Joy Ma Manager of the Editorial Content, EurekAlert!, American Association of the Advancement of Science, Washington DC, USA Lai Xu Former chief editor of Guokr.com, Beijing, China Shi Yan Deputy director of the China Research Institute for Science Popularisation, Chinese Association of Science and Technology, Beijing, China Mu-ming Poo (Chair) Director of the Insitute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black carbon (BC) is one of the most important climate pollutants due to its strong positive radiative forcing on the climate system. However, long-term observation of BC is inadequate, and its trend remains unknown at both regional and global scales. In this study, using quality-controlled ground-based black carbon observations at 34 stations, the climatology of BC mass concentration during 2006–2017 in China was evaluated for the first time. The national annual average BC concentration was 3534 ng/m3, and the concentration exhibited large spatial variation, from a minimum of 272 ng/m3 to a maximum of 10,228 ng/m3. Significant seasonal variations were also observed. The peak BC concentration (4763 ± 3380 ng/m3) occurred during winter, followed by autumn (3752 ± 2623 ng/m3) and spring (3022 ± 2121 ng/m3). The lowest BC concentration occurred in summer (2583 ± 1780 ng/m3) due to decreased emissions, wet removal by precipitation, and diffusion induced by strong turbulent mixing. Additionally, the diurnal variability at about 80% of the stations in China showed a bimodal pattern. Daily maximum BC concentration during 0000–0600, 0600–1200, 1200–1800, and 1800–2400 local solar time accounted for 0, 41, 12, and 47% of the total, respectively. In particular, the diurnal and monthly variations in BC were explicitly analyzed at seven baseline stations. Surface BC has exhibited a significant declining trend across China, which is partly corroborated by the increase in single scattering albedo during the same period in Beijing. Also, the BC radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere has declined at the rate of − 0.9 ± 0.1 W/m2/10 years over China, which differs from with the trend in the simulation using the CMIP6 emission. The decreasing BC has led to a larger reduction rate in atmospheric heating (− 3.7 ± 0.4 W/m2/10 years), implying a less stable atmosphere that facilitates the dispersion of air pollutants. The declining BC burden implies for both the air quality in China and regional climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haze days induced by aerosol pollution in North and East China have posed a persistent and growing problem over the past few decades. These events are particularly threatening to densely populated cities such as Beijing. While the sources of this pollution are predominantly anthropogenic, natural climate variations may also play a role in allowing for atmospheric conditions conducive to formation of severe haze episodes over populated areas. Here, an investigation is conducted into the effects of changes in global dynamics and emissions on air quality in China's polluted regions using 35 simulations developed from the Community Earth Systems Model Large Ensemble (CESM LENS) run over the period 1920–2100. It is shown that internal variability significantly modulates aerosol optical depth (AOD) over China; it takes roughly a decade for the forced response to balance the effects from internal variability even in China's most polluted regions. Random forest regressions are used to accurately model (R2 > 0.9) wintertime AOD using just climate oscillations, the month of the year, and emissions. How different phases of each oscillation affect aerosol loading is projected using these regressions. AOD responses are identified for each oscillation, with particularly strong responses from El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). As ENSO can be projected a few months in advance and improvements in linear inverse modeling (LIM) may yield a similar predictability for the PDO, results of this study offer opportunities to improve the predictability of China's severe wintertime haze events and to inform policy options that could mitigate subsequent health impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid population growth and increased economic activity impose an urgent challenge on the sustainability of water resources in Beijing. Water resources system is a complex uncertain system under climate change which is of vulnerability. But water resources system vulnerability research is relatively weak. In this study, we present a multifunctional hierarchy indicator system for the performance evaluation of water resources vulnerability (WRV) under climate change. We established an evaluation model, i.e., analytic hierarchy process combining set pair analysis (AHPSPA) model, for assessing WRV, in which weight is determined by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and the evaluation degrees are determined by the set pair analysis (SPA) theory. According to the principle of scientificalness, representative, completeness and operability, the index systems and standard of water resources vulnerability evaluation are established based on the analysis of sensibility and adaptability which include five subsystems: climate change, water resources change, social and economic infrastructure, water use level and water security capability. The AHPSPA model is used to assess water resource vulnerability in Beijing with 26 indexes under eight kinds of future climate change scenarios. Certain and uncertain information quantity of the WRV is calculated by connection numbers in the AHPSPA model. Results show that the WRV of Beijing is in the middle vulnerability (3 or III) under above-mentioned different climate change scenarios. The uncertain information is between 37.77 and 39.99 % in the WRV evaluation system in Beijing. Compared with present situation, the WRV will become better under scenario I and III and will become worse under scenario II, scenario IV, scenario representative concentration pathways (RCP)2.6, scenario RCP4.5, scenario RCP6.0 and scenario RCP8.5. In addition, we find that water resources change and water use level factors play more important role in the evaluation system of water resource vulnerability in Beijing. Finally, we make some suggestions for water resources management of Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]