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Accurate prediction of air quality is crucial for assessing the state of the atmospheric environment, especially considering the nonlinearity, volatility, and abrupt changes in air quality data. This paper introduces an air quality index (AQI) prediction model based on the Dung Beetle Algorithm (DBO) aimed at overcoming limitations in traditional prediction models, such as inadequate access to data features, challenges in parameter setting, and accuracy constraints. The proposed model optimizes the parameters of Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) and integrates the Informer adaptive sequential prediction model with the Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short Term Memory (CNN-LSTM). Initially, the correlation coefficient method is utilized to identify key impact features from multivariate weather and meteorological data. Subsequently, penalty factors and the number of variational modes in the VMD are optimized using DBO. The optimized parameters are utilized to develop a variationally constrained model to decompose the air quality sequence. The data are categorized based on approximate entropy, and high-frequency data are fed into the Informer model, while low-frequency data are fed into the CNN-LSTM model. The predicted values of the subsystems are then combined and reconstructed to obtain the AQI prediction results. Evaluation using actual monitoring data from Beijing demonstrates that the proposed coupling prediction model of the air quality index in this paper is superior to other parameter optimization models. The Mean Absolute Error (MAE) decreases by 13.59%, the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) decreases by 7.04%, and the R-square (R2) increases by 1.39%. This model surpasses 11 other models in terms of lower error rates and enhances prediction accuracy. Compared with the mainstream swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, DBO, as an optimization algorithm, demonstrates higher computational efficiency and is closer to the actual value. The proposed coupling model provides a new method for air quality index prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding air quality requires a comprehensive understanding of its various factors. Most of the association rule techniques focuses on high frequency terms, ignoring the potential importance of low- frequency terms and causing unnecessary storage space waste. Therefore, a dynamic genetic association rule mining algorithm is proposed in this paper, which combines the improved dynamic genetic algorithm with the association rule mining algorithm to realize the importance mining of low- frequency terms. Firstly, in the chromosome coding phase of genetic algorithm, an innovative multi-information coding strategy is proposed, which selectively stores similar values of different levels in one storage unit. It avoids storing all the values at once and facilitates efficient mining of valid rules later. Secondly, by weighting the evaluation indicators such as support, confidence and promotion in association rule mining, a new evaluation index is formed, avoiding the need to set a minimum threshold for high-interest rules. Finally, in order to improve the mining performance of the rules, the dynamic crossover rate and mutation rate are set to improve the search efficiency of the algorithm. In the experimental stage, this paper adopts the 2016 annual air quality data set of Beijing to verify the effectiveness of the unit point multi-information coding strategy in reducing the rule storage air, the effectiveness of mining the rules formed by the low frequency item set, and the effectiveness of combining the rule mining algorithm with the swarm intelligence optimization algorithm in terms of search time and convergence. In the experimental stage, this paper adopts the 2016 annual air quality data set of Beijing to verify the effectiveness of the above three aspects. The unit point multi-information coding strategy reduced the rule space storage consumption by 50%, the new evaluation index can mine more interesting rules whose interest level can be up to 90%, while mining the rules formed by the lower frequency terms, and in terms of search time, we reduced it about 20% compared with some meta-heuristic algorithms, while improving convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound impacts of severe air pollution on human health, ecological balance, and economic stability are undeniable. Precise air quality forecasting stands as a crucial necessity, enabling governmental bodies and vulnerable communities to proactively take essential measures to reduce exposure to detrimental pollutants. Previous research has primarily focused on predicting air quality using only time-series data. However, the importance of remote-sensing image data has received limited attention. This paper proposes a new multi-modal deep-learning model, Res-GCN, which integrates high spatial resolution remote-sensing images and time-series air quality data from multiple stations to forecast future air quality. Res-GCN employs two deep-learning networks, one utilizing the residual network to extract hidden visual information from remote-sensing images, and another using a dynamic spatio-temporal graph convolution network to capture spatio-temporal information from time-series data. By extracting features from two different modalities, improved predictive performance can be achieved. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, experiments were conducted on two real-world datasets. The results show that the Res-GCN model effectively extracts multi-modal features, significantly enhancing the accuracy of multi-step predictions. Compared to the best-performing baseline model, the multi-step prediction's mean absolute error, root mean square error, and mean absolute percentage error increased by approximately 6%, 7%, and 7%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the effects of interventions to reduce air pollution during two international events on air quality in Beijing and its neighbor cities. Air quality data were gathered from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, meteorological data from the China Meteorological Administration and economic data from the China Statistical Yearbook. The paper uses fixed-effect panel data models to empirically evaluate air quality improvement in Beijing and other affected cities before, during, and after the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Results show substantial improvement in air quality in Beijing and neighboring cities during the two events. However, some of the air quality improvement achieved reverted within a year after the games and within a week after the summit. Furthermore, the improvement achieved during the summit completely reverted and air quality deteriorated severely five days after the summit. It is also found that air quality in China, at least in the cities included in this study, gradually improved over the past 15 years or so. The findings suggest that sustainable interventions and incentive-based programs to reduce emissions from industry production and traffic are the key to maintaining the air pollution reduction achieved during the events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air quality plays a vital role in people's health, and air quality forecasting can assist in decision making for government planning and sustainable development. In contrast, it is challenging to multi-step forecast accurately due to its complex and nonlinear caused by both temporal and spatial dimensions. Deep models, with their ability to model strong nonlinearities, have become the primary methods for air quality forecasting. However, because of the lack of mechanism-based analysis, uninterpretability forecasting makes decisions risky, especially when the government makes decisions. This paper proposes an interpretable variational Bayesian deep learning model with information self-screening for PM2.5 forecasting. Firstly, based on factors related to PM2.5 concentration, e.g., temperature, humidity, wind speed, spatial distribution, etc., an interpretable multivariate data screening structure for PM2.5 forecasting was established to catch as much helpful information as possible. Secondly, the self-screening layer was implanted in the deep learning network to optimize the selection of input variables. Further, following implantation of the screening layer, a variational Bayesian gated recurrent unit (GRU) network was constructed to overcome the complex distribution of PM2.5 and achieve accurate multi-step forecasting. The high accuracy of the proposed method is verified by PM2.5 data in Beijing, China, which provides an effective way, with multiple factors for PM2.5 forecasting determined using deep learning technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of deep learning in time-series prediction has developed gradually. In this paper, we propose a deep generative network model for feature extraction of multivariate time series, namely, mutual information variational autoencoders (MI-VAE). In the architecture of the proposed model, we use the latent space of VAE for feature learning, which can extract the essential features of multivariate time-series data effectively. The latent space employed directly as a feature extractor can avoid poor interpretability of model. In addition, we introduce a mutual information term into the loss function, which improves the expression capability and accuracy of model. The proposed model, combining the merits of VAE and mutual information, extracts features for multivariate time-series data from a new perspective. The Lorenz system and Beijing air quality time series are used to test performance of the proposed model and comparative models. Results show that the proposed model is superior to other similar models in terms of accuracy and expression capability of latent space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing suffers from poor air quality, particularly during wintertime haze episodes when concentrations of PM 2.5 (particulate matter with a diameter < 2.5 µ m) can peak at > 400 µ g m -3. Black carbon (BC), an aerosol which strongly absorbs solar radiation, can make up to 10 % of PM 2.5 in Beijing. BC is of interest due to its climatic and health impacts. BC has also been found to impact planetary boundary layer (PBL) meteorology. Through interacting with radiation and altering the thermal profile of the lower atmosphere, BC can either suppress or enhance PBL development depending on the properties and altitude of the BC layer. Previous research assessing the impact of BC on PBL meteorology has been investigated through the use of regional models, which are limited both by resolution and the chosen boundary layer schemes. In this work, we apply a high-resolution model (UCLALES-SALSA) that couples an aerosol and radiative transfer model with large-eddy simulation (LES) to quantify the impact of BC at different altitudes on PBL dynamics using conditions from a specific haze episode which occurred from 1–4 December 2016 in Beijing. Results presented in this paper quantify the heating rate of BC at various altitudes to be between 0.01 and 0.016 K/h per µ g/m 3 of BC, increasing with altitude but decreasing around PBL top. Through utilising a high-resolution model which explicitly calculates turbulent dynamics, this paper showcases the impact of BC on PBL dynamics both within and above the PBL. These results show that BC within the PBL increases maximum PBL height by 0.4 % but that the same loading of BC above the PBL can suppress PBL height by 6.5 %. Furthermore, when BC is present throughout the column, the impact of BC suppressing PBL development is further maximised, with BC causing a 17 % decrease in maximum PBL height compared to only scattering aerosols. Assessing the impact of these opposite effects, in this paper, we present a mechanism through which BC may play a prominent role in the intensity and longevity of Beijing's pollution episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether mega-events-initiated planning regulations improved air quality in Chinese cities and explores the driving forces of the enforcement of such regulations. Using the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an example, we find that mega-events serve as an opportunity for cities to combat air pollution. The 2008 Olympics prompted a handful of Chinese cities to cut pollution and sustain a blue sky: Cities with air quality regulated for the Olympics cut their Air Pollution Index by about 16 points during the Games, compared to non-regulated cities, and 60% of that effect remained four years after the event. These achievements are obtained through effective mobilization of city leaders by associating air quality with their political careers. This study reveals that 1) a mega-event may improve urban environmental quality beyond the host cities and the event period, and 2) successful implementation of environmental regulations hinges on incentivizing local leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is the key parameter for determining the aerosol radiative effects and air quality variation. It is important to quantify nighttime aerosols using satellite-based night light images to understand their diurnal variations. This study selected high-resolution low light images from the Glimmer Imager (GLI) aboard the SDGSAT-1 satellite to examine spatial–temporal changes in night light emitted from the urban surface of Beijing. The radiance observed by SDGSAT-1/GLI was used to discern the AOD changes using the radiance background method (RB) and standard deviation method (SD) based on the characterization of the radiance from artificial light sources. Cloud cleaning processes were conducted to reduce the influence of the cloud cover in the glimmer images of the derived AOD. The results showed that there are good consistencies between the derived AOD results from the remote sensing and nighttime site observations. The radiance background method is better than the standard deviation method for deriving AOD using SDGSAT-1/GLI with the RMSE of its RB (0.0984) being greater than that of the SD (0.7653). The influence of moonlight, atmospheric absorption, and positioning errors on the results is briefly discussed. This paper shows that SDGSAT-1 can obtain relatively reliable night AOD values based on our investigations using the available satellite images taken in winter and spring, and that it has the potential to provide the scientific products of nighttime AOD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the enhanced control and emission-reduction measures to improve air quality during major events could provide data theory and scientific support for air-quality improvement during non-activities. Based on the air-quality data published by the China Environmental Monitoring Station and the meteorological elements and weather conditions released by the China Meteorological Administration, this paper explored the characteristics of air-quality evolution in Beijing from 5 August to 18 September 2015 and the weather situation during the Military Parade. The results showed that: (1) Emission-reduction measures implemented for air quality by Beijing and its surrounding area were induced, and we explored the contribution of these measures to pollutants or AQI in the locality. (2) During the 2015 Military Parade, Beijing was in the front or lower part of the high-pressure system. Due to the strong effect of North or Northeast winds, the weather situation was conducive to the diffusion of pollutants. When before or after the implementation, once the atmospheric diffusion was poor, the pollutants would accumulate gradually. Thus, it can be seen that the weather situation had a great impact on air quality. (3) During the implementation, PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and other pollutants decreased significantly, of which the concentration of PM10 decreased the most, from 109 μg·m−3 down to 34 μg·m−3, and the concentration of PM2.5 decreased by 72.73%. According to the changes between before and during the implementation or during and after the implementation, the concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 increased when the implementation of the emission-reduction measures had been finished, indicating that the enhanced control measures made a great contribution to the emission reduction in particles. (4) In addition, the annual average of AQI in the three years is 87.49, and the average value of a normal year was the average value of 2013 and 2014. The average value of the normal year during the military parade is 64.63, which was 70.40% lower than the average value of AQI during the military parade. The goal of reaching the secondary standard of GB-3095-2012 was achieved, and there was still a long way to go from the primary standard. In a few words, in order to achieve the goal of better air quality throughout the year, all parties still needed to coordinate control and make joint efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region has become one of the worst areas for haze pollution in China. Sun photometers are widely used for aerosol optical property monitoring due to the advantages of fully automatic acquisition, simple maintenance, standardization of data processing, and low uncertainty. Research sites are mostly concentrated in cities, while the long-term analysis of aerosol optical depth (AOD) for the pollution transmission channel in rural Beijing is still lacking. Here, we obtained an AOD monitoring dataset from August 2017 to March 2019 using the ground-based CE-318 sun photometer at the Gucheng meteorological observation site in southwest Beijing. These sun photometer AOD data were used for the ground-based validation of MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and AHI (Advanced Himawari Imager) AOD data. It was found that MODIS and AHI can reflect AOD variation trends by sun photometer on daily, monthly, and seasonal scales. The original AOD measurements of the sun photometer show good correlations with satellite observations by MODIS (R = 0.97), and AHI (R = 0.89), respectively, corresponding to their different optimal spatial and temporal windows for matching with collocated satellite ground pixels. However, MODIS is less stable for aerosols of different concentrations and particle sizes. Most of the linear regression intercepts between the satellite and the photometer are less than 0.1, indicating that the errors due to surface reflectance in the inversion are small, and the slope is least biased (AHI: slope = 0.91, MODIS: slope = 0.18) in the noon period (11 a.m.–2 p.m.) and most biased in summer (AHI: slope = 0.77, MODIS: slope = 1.31), probably due to errors in the aerosol model. The daily and seasonal variation trends between CE-318 AOD measurements in the Gucheng site and fine particulate observations from the national air quality site nearby were also compared and investigated. In addition, a typical haze–dust complex pollution event in North China was analyzed and the changes in AOD during the pollution event were quantified. In processing, we use sun photometer and satellite AOD data in combination with meteorological and PM data. Overall, this paper has implications for the study of AOD evolution patterns at different time scales, the association between PM2.5 concentrations and AOD changes, and pollution monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution caused by coal burning not only increases the cost of environmental pollution but also harms human health. It is urgent for China to change the practice of coal-fired central heating. Therefore, the effectiveness and sustainability of the Coal to Gas and Electricity policy have become the focus of all sectors of society. In this paper, eight cities in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region were taken as the experimental groups and the other eleven cities as the control groups. Based on the PSM-DID model and the time-varying DID model, a quasi-natural experimental analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of the policy of coal to gas and electricity to improve air quality in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 2015 to 2020 and to test the sustainability of the policy. Three research conclusions are shown below: First, during the implementation of the policy, especially in 2019, the AQI index decreased significantly. Although there was a rebound thereafter, it was still lower than before. This shows that the Coal to Gas and Electricity policy has indeed improved the air quality in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei during its implementation. Second, the policy had a great impact on SO2 and PM10 but was relatively weak on PM2.5 and CO. Therefore, there is an urgent need to formulate scientific and accurate policies to control different air pollutants. Third, the time-varying DID model was used to identify the dynamic sustainability effect of the Coal to Gas and Electricity policy. The results showed that the policy had a strong impact in the initial stage, but its effect was greatly reduced at the end of the implementation or near the end, when it was far less obvious than in the initial stage of the policy. Therefore, in formulating relevant measures to reduce air pollution, it is necessary to fully consider the sustainability of the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is one of the most important parameters of aerosol and a key physical quantity to characterize atmospheric turbidity and air pollution. Accurate retrieval of AOD is of great significance for air quality assessment. However, the spatial resolution of the currently widely used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) AOD products is too low to meet the application research of atmospheric environment at the regional scale. In 2013, China launched the Gaofen-1 (GF-1) satellite, which provides a new idea for AOD retrieval. In this paper, we apply the synergetic use of TERRA and AQUA satellite MODIS data to calculate the high-resolution AOD over Beijing based on the Synergetic Retrieval of Aerosol Properties algorithm (SRAP) and discussed scale conversion problems between AODs with different resolutions. To obtain the 100 m MODIS data, we use GF-1 wide-field-of-view data to downscale 1 km MODIS data based on mutual information method. The retrieved AOD has a spatial resolution of 100 m and can cover many land surface types. Preliminary validation was carried out with the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) ground observation data. The correlation coefficient is about 0.88, and the root-mean-square error is about 0.15. Due to the high resolution of retrieved results, more detailed features can be provided in the spatial distribution. The experimental results show that the method has high precision, and further verification work is continuing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with mechanism-based modeling methods, data-driven modeling based on big data has become a popular research field in recent years because of its applicability. However, it is not always better to have more data when building a forecasting model in practical areas. Due to the noise and conflict, redundancy, and inconsistency of big time-series data, the forecasting accuracy may reduce on the contrary. This paper proposes a deep network by selecting and understanding data to improve performance. Firstly, a data self-screening layer (DSSL) with a maximal information distance coefficient (MIDC) is designed to filter input data with high correlation and low redundancy; then, a variational Bayesian gated recurrent unit (VBGRU) is used to improve the anti-noise ability and robustness of the model. Beijing's air quality and meteorological data are conducted in a verification experiment of 24 h PM2.5 concentration forecasting, proving that the proposed model is superior to other models in accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health in a Chinese Megacity (APHH-Beijing) programme is an international collaborative project focusing on understanding the sources, processes and health effects of air pollution in the Beijing megacity. APHH-Beijing brings together leading China and UK research groups, state-of-the-art infrastructure and air quality models to work on four research themes: (1) sources and emissions of air pollutants; (2) atmospheric processes affecting urban air pollution; (3) air pollution exposure and health impacts; and (4) interventions and solutions. Themes 1 and 2 are closely integrated and support Theme 3, while Themes 1–3 provide scientific data for Theme 4 to develop cost-effective air pollution mitigation solutions. This paper provides an introduction to (i) the rationale of the APHH-Beijing programme and (ii) the measurement and modelling activities performed as part of it. In addition, this paper introduces the meteorology and air quality conditions during two joint intensive field campaigns – a core integration activity in APHH-Beijing. The coordinated campaigns provided observations of the atmospheric chemistry and physics at two sites: (i) the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in central Beijing and (ii) Pinggu in rural Beijing during 10 November–10 December 2016 (winter) and 21 May–22 June 2017 (summer). The campaigns were complemented by numerical modelling and automatic air quality and low-cost sensor observations in the Beijing megacity. In summary, the paper provides background information on the APHH-Beijing programme and sets the scene for more focused papers addressing specific aspects, processes and effects of air pollution in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interpolation, prediction, and feature analysis of fine-gained air quality are three important topics in the area of urban air computing. The solutions to these topics can provide extremely useful information to support air pollution control, and consequently generate great societal and technical impacts. Most of the existing work solves the three problems separately by different models. In this paper, we propose a general and effective approach to solve the three problems in one model called the Deep Air Learning (DAL). The main idea of DAL lies in embedding feature selection and semi-supervised learning in different layers of the deep learning network. The proposed approach utilizes the information pertaining to the unlabeled spatio-temporal data to improve the performance of the interpolation and the prediction, and performs feature selection and association analysis to reveal the main relevant features to the variation of the air quality. We evaluate our approach with extensive experiments based on real data sources obtained in Beijing, China. Experiments show that DAL is superior to the peer models from the recent literature when solving the topics of interpolation, prediction, and feature analysis of fine-gained air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate monitoring of air quality can no longer meet people's needs. People hope to predict air quality in advance and make timely warnings and defenses to minimize the threat to life. This paper proposed a new air quality spatiotemporal prediction model to predict future air quality and is based on a large number of environmental data and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network. In order to capture the spatial and temporal characteristics of the pollutant concentration data, the data of the five sites with the highest correlation of time-series concentration of PM2.5 (particles with aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 mm) at the experimental site were first extracted, and the weather data and other pollutant data at the same time were merged in the next step, extracting advanced spatiotemporal features through long- and short-term memory neural networks. The model presented in this paper was compared with other baseline models on the hourly PM2.5 concentration data set collected at 35 air quality monitoring sites in Beijing from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2017. The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed model is better than other baseline models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things and Big Data, smart cities have received increasing attention. Predicting air quality accurately and efficiently is an important part of building a smart city. However, air quality prediction is very challenging because it is affected by many complex factors, such as dynamic spatial correlation between air quality detection sensors, dynamic temporal correlation, and external factors (such as road networks and points of interest). Therefore, this paper proposes a long short-term memory (LSTM) air quality prediction model based on a spatiotemporal attention mechanism (STA-LSTM). The model uses an encoder-decoder structure to model spatiotemporal features. A spatial attention mechanism is introduced in the encoder to capture the relative influence of surrounding sites on the prediction area. A temporal attention mechanism is introduced in the decoder to capture the time dependence of air quality. In addition, for spatial data such as point of interest (POI) and road networks, this paper uses the LINE graph embedding method to obtain a low-dimensional vector representation of spatial data to obtain abundant spatial features. This paper evaluates STA-LSTM on the Beijing dataset, and the root mean square error (RMSE) and R-squared ( R 2 ) indicators are used to compare with six benchmarks. The experimental results show that the model proposed in this paper can achieve better performance than the performances of other benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing, as a representative megacity in China, is experiencing some of the most severe air pollution episodes in the world, and its fast urbanization has led to substantial urban and peri-urban disparities in both health status and air quality. Uncertainties remain regarding the possible causal links between individual air pollutants and health outcomes, with spatial comparative investigations of these links lacking, particularly in developing megacities. In light of this challenge, Effects of AIR pollution on cardiopuLmonary disEaSe in urban and peri-urban reSidents in Beijing (AIRLESS) was initiated, with the aim of addressing the complex issue of relating multi-pollutant exposure to cardiopulmonary outcomes. This paper presents the novel methodological framework employed in the project, namely (1) the deployment of two panel studies from established cohorts in urban and peri-urban Beijing, with different exposure settings regarding pollution levels and diverse sources; (2) the collection of detailed measurements and biomarkers of participants from a nested case (hypertensive) and control (healthy) study setting; (3) the assessment of indoor and personal exposure to multiple gaseous pollutants and particulate matter at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution with validated novel sensor technologies; (4) the assessment of ambient air pollution levels in a large-scale field campaign, particularly the chemical composition of particulate matter. Preliminary results showed that there is a large difference between ambient and personal air pollution levels, and the differences varied between seasons and locations. These large differences were reflected on the different health responses between the two panels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the characteristics of air quality and the relationship between air quality and weather factors, based on daily meteorological data from 2016 to 2019 in Beijing using information diffusion technology, the probability distribution of air quality index in different seasons and the development trend of air quality have been studied, and the relationship between weather factors and air quality discussed. The results show that: 1) According to the air quality, the order of the four seasons is summer, spring, autumn and winter. In summer, the frequency of moderate air pollution and above is about 2.54%, and the frequency of serious air pollution is about 0%. In winter, the frequency of moderate air pollution and above is 17.83%, and the frequency of serious air pollution is 2.93%. 2) The air quality of Beijing has been improving in recent years, which shows that with the strengthening of air pollution control efforts, certain results have been achieved. 3) Quantitative analysis of the relationship between winter air quality index and temperature and wind in Beijing shows that the degree of air pollution in winter increases with the increase of temperature and decreases with the increase of wind force. The frequency of mild air pollution and above is about 8.91% when the daily maximum temperature is below 0°C and 48.78% when the daily maximum temperature is above 9°C. The frequency of mild air pollution and above is about 45.17% when the daily maximum wind force is level 0, and 20.89% when the daily maximum wind force is level 3 and above. Examples show that the information diffusion technology can make full use of the location information of the sample points by transforming the traditional sample data points into fuzzy sets, and achieves good results in frequency statistics and trend fitting. The model established in this paper has the value of popularization and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environment and development are major issues of general concern. After much suffering from the harm of environmental pollution, human beings began to pay attention to environmental protection and started to carry out pollutant prediction research. A large number of air pollutant predictions have tried to predict pollutants by revealing their evolution patterns, emphasizing the fitting analysis of time series but ignoring the spatial transmission effect of adjacent areas, leading to low prediction accuracy. To solve this problem, we propose a time series prediction network with the self-optimization ability of a spatio-temporal graph neural network (BGGRU) to mine the changing pattern of the time series and the spatial propagation effect. The proposed network includes spatial and temporal modules. The spatial module uses a graph sampling and aggregation network (GraphSAGE) in order to extract the spatial information of the data. The temporal module uses a Bayesian graph gated recurrent unit (BGraphGRU), which applies a graph network to the gated recurrent unit (GRU) so as to fit the data's temporal information. In addition, this study used Bayesian optimization to solve the problem of the model's inaccuracy caused by inappropriate hyperparameters of the model. The high accuracy of the proposed method was verified by the actual PM2.5 data of Beijing, China, which provided an effective method for predicting the PM2.5 concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pollution havens create environmental inequality issues. China's recent policy of directing high-pollution firms to migrate out of its capital, Beijing, offers a case of a pollution haven that was mandated, rather than resulting from firms' responses to environmental regulation. More importantly, it leads to a question that has been less discussed in previous literature: does a pollution haven strike back? After the highly polluting enterprises moved out of Beijing to neighboring Hebei province, Hebei has been blamed for the continuing poor air quality in Beijing, based on a perception that the pollutants emitted in Hebei are being blown back to Beijing. This paper investigates the existence of a pollution haven in Hebei and quantifies the contribution of Hebei's emissions to Beijing's air quality. We find that the proportion of output values and the relative concentration of high-pollution industries in Hebei increased when the large-scale out-migration began, while the indicators in Beijing decreased. We also find higher emissions of enterprises in Hebei than their counterparts in Beijing. Together, these findings indicate the existence of a "manmade" pollution haven. Further, based on high-frequency spatial data, we combine an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and a Spatial Autoregressive Model and decompose the factors that affect Beijing's air quality into local and regional transport of air-borne pollutants. We find a significant effect of the neighboring cities' air pollution on Beijing's air quality. This indicates that the pollution haven indeed struck back. These findings imply the importance of regional policies to control air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier studies that evaluated the impact of vehicular emissions on urban air quality often reached mixed conclusions, providing little guidance to city planners seeking solutions to the ever-growing problem of air pollution. In this paper, we combine the strengths of earlier studies with hourly-level data to reexamine the causal relationship between traffic congestion and ambient air quality in Beijing. We find that around 33% to 57% of ambient air pollution in Beijing can be attributed to vehicular emissions. However, this average figure is masked by nonlinearity, suggesting that policy makers should focus their efforts on alleviating areas with heaviest congestion to improve air quality. (JEL Q53, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid urbanization and industrialization of northern China in recent decades has resulted in poor air quality in major cities like Beijing. Transport of air pollution plays a key role in determining the relative influence of local emissions and regional contributions to observed air pollution. In this paper, dispersion modelling (Numerical Atmospheric Modelling Environment, NAME model) is used with emission inventories and in situ ground measurement data to track the pathways of air masses arriving in Beijing. The percentage of time the air masses spent over specific regions during their travel to Beijing is used to assess the effects of regional meteorology on carbon monoxide (CO), a good tracer of anthropogenic emissions. The NAME model is used with the MEIC (Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China) emission inventories to determine the amount of pollution that is transported to Beijing from the immediate surrounding areas and regions further away. This approach captures the magnitude and variability of CO over Beijing and reveals that CO is strongly driven by transport processes. This study provides a more detailed understanding of relative contributions to air pollution in Beijing under different regional airflow conditions. Approximately 45 % over a 4-year average (2013–2016) of the total CO pollution that affects Beijing is transported from other regions, and about half of this contribution comes from beyond the Hebei and Tianjin regions that immediately surround Beijing. The industrial sector is the dominant emission source from the surrounding regions and contributes over 20 % of the total CO in Beijing. Finally, using PM2.5 to determine high-pollution days, three pollution classification types of pollution were identified and used to analyse the APHH winter campaign and the 4-year period. The results can inform targeted control measures to be implemented by Beijing and the surrounding provinces to tackle air quality problems that affect Beijing and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Air pollution has become an unavoidable reality in today's world. With the rapid development of various industries and motorized transportation, large amounts of harmful substances such as soot, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, and hydrocarbons are released into the atmosphere, lasting a long time and in concentrations exceeding tolerable environmental limits. In this study, we investigated an intelligent algorithm that had the functions of parameter optimization and decision rules, which we applied to Beijing air quality data to analyze and forecast urban air quality. Air pollution has an ongoing devastating impact on the planet, damaging ecosystems, depleting natural resources, and endangering human health. This paper proposes a new intelligent algorithm that includes parameter optimization and decision rules to forecast and analyze of urban air quality. Through analysis of 24-h daily air quality data provided by the Beijing Air Quality Monitoring Station, simulated annealing (SA) and a decision tree (DT) emerge as the key factors. We prove that in the investigated algorithm, SA and DT can be used to make decision rules and achieve better accuracy for classification. We find that SA can be used to adjust the best parameter settings for the DT. Simulation results show that the accuracy of the proposed algorithm for classification is far better than other existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vertical structure of wind is a key factor in modulating air quality, from which the determination of boundary layer height (BLH) remains a major challenge. In this paper, we developed an improved threshold method to determine the BLH from radar wind profiler (RWP) measurements. The normalized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) profiles were used instead of the original SNR profiles to avoid instrumental inconsistencies. Additionally, a peak filter was designed to indicate the BLH based on the maximum SNR by taking into account the multiple peaks in the SNR profile. This algorithm was then applied to the RWP measurements taken in the summer (June–July–August) of 2018 in Beijing to obtain the BLHs. Validation analyses suggested that the BLH retrievals from RWP exhibited high consistency with those from radiosondes, with an average correlation coefficient of 0.69 (0.66) and a root mean squared error of 0.39 (0.41) in the daytime (nighttime). Additionally, the major features of summertime BLHs in Beijing were examined. In particular, a distinct diurnal variation in BLH was observed with a peak (1630 ± 510 m) occurring at 0600 universal time coordinated (UTC) and a minimum (587 ± 343 m) at 2300 UTC. Therefore, the algorithm presented here has great potential to be applied to other regions to obtain reliable BLHs. The findings obtained here highlight the importance of vertical wind structure in air quality studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the mean sea level pressure field and 10-meter wind field across eastern China, weather patterns were classified using principal component analysis in the T-model (T-PCA), and four weather conditions were identified. Weather conditions and meteorological factors affecting the winter PM2.5 concentration in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) were also analyzed. The results showed that there were significant differences in the PM2.5 distribution between BTH and the YRD under different weather conditions. The intensity and path of cold air played important roles in regulating the PM2.5 concentration distribution in eastern China. For the BTH region, under type 2 and type 4 conditions, the weather was stable, and heavy pollution frequently occurred; however, under type 1 and type 3 conditions, cold air was active, and the air quality improved. For the YRD, both type 1 and type 4 conditions lead to high PM2.5 concentrations in this region. Type 1 cold air flows southward along the northwestern path and is beneficial for transporting pollutants from BTH to the YRD, causing a high probability of PM2.5 pollution. Conversely, the southward movement of type 3 cold air along the eastern path was beneficial for pollutant diffusion in the YRD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of national policies for air pollution control has been demonstrated, but the relative effectiveness of short-term emission reduction measures in comparison with national policies has not. Here we show that short-term abatement measures during important international events substantially reduced PM2.5 concentrations, but air quality rebounded to pre-event levels after the measures ceased. Long-term adherence to strict emission reduction policies led to successful decreases of 54% in PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing, and 23% in atmospheric nitrogen deposition in China from 2012 to 2020. Incentivized by "blue skies" type campaigns, economic development and reactive nitrogen pollution are quickly decoupled, showing that a combination of inspiring but aggressive short-term measures and effective but durable long-term policies delivers sustainable air quality improvement. However, increased ammonia concentrations, transboundary pollutant flows, and the complexity to achieving reduction targets under climate change scenarios, underscore the need for the synergistic control of multiple pollutants and inter-regional action. In response to the rebound of air pollution during large events in China, the authors propose that a combination of ambitious short-term measures and enduring long-term pollution control policies is a sustainable solution for improving air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate PM 2.5 forecasting provides a possibility for establishing an early warning system to notify the public and take precautionary measures to prevent negative effects on ambient air quality and public health. Considering strong seasonal variation in meteorological conditions, in this paper, a seasonal stacked autoencoder model combining seasonal analysis and deep feature learning is proposed for forecasting the hourly PM 2.5 concentration, named DL-SSAE model. The original data are firstly decomposed into four seasonal subseries according to the Chinese calendar, and then the Kendall correlation coefficient method is employed to search inherent relationships between PM 2.5 concentrations and meteorological parameters within 1-h ahead for each seasonal time series. The inherent relationships of each seasonal subseries are finally extracted, learned, and modeled by different deep neural networks (stacked autoencoders for regression), and the hourly PM 2.5 forecasts are yielded. The addressed model is tested by the dataset collected from three environmental monitoring stations in Beijing, China. The results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms all other considered models with/without seasonality consideration in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As major chemical components of airborne fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) have vital impacts on air quality, climate change, and human health. Because OC and EC are closely associated with fuel combustion, it is helpful for the scientific community and policymakers assessing the efficacy of air pollution control measures to study the impact of control measures and regional transport on OC and EC levels. In this study, hourly mass concentrations of OC and EC associated with PM 2.5 were semi-continuously measured from March 2013 to February 2018. The results showed that annual mean OC and EC concentrations declined from 14.0 to 7.7 µgm-3 and from 4.0 to 2.6 µgm-3 , respectively, from March 2013 to February 2018. In combination with the data of OC and EC in previous studies, an obvious decreasing trend in OC and EC concentrations was found, which was caused by clean energy policies and effective air pollution control measures. However, no obvious change in the ratios of OC and EC to the PM 2.5 mass (on average, 0.164 and 0.049, respectively) was recorded, suggesting that inorganic ions still contributed a lot to PM 2.5. Based on the seasonal variations in OC and EC, it appeared that higher OC and EC concentrations were still observed in the winter months, with the exception of winter of 2017–2018. Traffic policies executed in Beijing resulted in nighttime peaks of OC and EC, caused by heavy-duty vehicles and heavy-duty diesel vehicles being permitted to operate from 00:00 to 06:00 (China standard time, UTC + 8, for all times throughout the paper). In addition, the fact that there was no traffic restriction in weekends led to higher concentrations on weekends compared to weekdays. Significant correlations between OC and EC were observed throughout the study period, suggesting that OC and EC originated from common emission sources, such as exhaust of vehicles and fuel combustion. OC and EC levels increased with enhanced SO2 , CO, and NOx concentrations while the O3 and OC levels were enhanced simultaneously when O3 concentrations were higher than 50 µgm-3. Non-parametric wind regression analysis was performed to examine the sources of OC and EC in the Beijing area. It was found that there were distinct hot spots in the northeast wind sector at wind speeds of approximately 0–6 km h -1 , as well as diffuse signals in the southwestern wind sectors. Source areas further away from Beijing were assessed by potential source contribution function (PSCF) analysis. A high-potential source area was precisely pinpointed, which was located in the northwestern and southern areas of Beijing in 2017 instead of solely in the southern areas of Beijing in 2013. This work shows that improvement of the air quality in Beijing benefits from strict control measures; however, joint prevention and control of regional air pollution in the regions is needed for further improving the air quality. The results provide a reference for controlling air pollution caused by rapid economic development in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies on Chinese dormitories are carried out in summer, while few focus on a transition season or winter. This study evaluated the air quality of a student dormitory in a university in the Beijing area by using a questionnaire survey and on-site measurements. The CO2 concentration was used as an indoor air quality evaluation index to characterize the freshness of the air, and different window opening conditions in the dormitory were simulated, with corresponding improvement plans proposed. The results of this study revealed that the air quality and thermal comfort of the student dormitories during a transition season and winter fell short of expectations. According to the survey, students who opened their windows frequently had a better subjective perception of the air quality. However, due to the large temperature difference between day and night, more than 80% of the students felt too cold when opening the windows. For daytime conditions, the area of unilateral ventilation window opening should not be less than 0.39 m2, the area of bilateral ventilation window opening should not be less than 0.13 m2, and the time taken to close the windows and doors should not exceed the maximum ventilation interval. Empirical equations were fitted for nighttime conditions based on the CO2 concentration, number of people in the room, and window opening area, resulting in a reasonable window opening area of 0.349 m2~0.457 m2. In sum, this study assessed the air quality status within typical university dormitories across varying seasons, gaining a clear understanding of how different ventilation strategies and occupant densities influence air freshness and thermal comfort. Based on these insights, a practical and optimized window area recommendation was formulated to enhance the indoor environmental quality in these dormitories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to estimate and assess residents' willingness to pay to improve air quality in the urban area of Beijing using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). The mean willingness to pay (WTP) for a 50% reduction of harmful substances in the air was 143 CNY per household per year, and the total WTP of the residents in the study area was 336 million CNY per year. As a proportion of household annual income, the mean WTP amounted to 0.7%. Four socio-economic variables were found to have significant impacts on residents' willingness to pay. The analysis results illustrated that WTP increases with income and education level, and decreases with household population and age. The willingness was larger for residents in the urban districts than those in the suburban districts. It was found that most of the protest bids lay on interviewees' incomplete perception of the values of environmental amenity. The influence of household income on people's willingness to pay illustrated in this study reflects a causal force of Beijing's transition to market economy that households created to have disposable income are more likely to care about environmental quality. The results of this study strike an optimistic note on the possibility of measuring the total economic value of environmental quality improvement by using the CVM in China. Suggestions on implication of the CVM for both academics and policy makers are provided in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of temporary air quality control measures on reducing pollutants during the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, utilizing real-time monitoring data from 2017 and 2022 to assess spatial and temporal variations in critical air pollutant concentrations. The results showed that concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, and NO2 in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region during the Olympic Games showed a marked decrease compared to the historical period, with reductions of 36.59%, 20.35%, 33.95%, 28.90%, and 22.70%, respectively. Significant north–south spatial differences were observed in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province during the Olympic period. The cities of Zhangjiakou, Chengde, Qinhuangdao, Beijing, and Tangshan showed the most significant pollution reduction. Based on assessments conducted during the Olympic period, it was noted that more than 95% of the daily average concentrations of pollutants are below the maximum values set by the World Health Organization for the interim target. Our research shows that provisional regulations effectively control the emission of air pollutants, providing a solid reference and basis for ensuring air quality during major international events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of China's industrialization, the air pollution is becoming more and more serious. It is vital for us to predict the air quality for determining the further prevention measures of avoiding the brought disasters. In this paper, we are going to propose an approach of predicting the air quality based on the multiple data features through fusing the multiple machine learning models. The approach takes the meteorological data and air quality data for the past six days as one batch of input (the whole data set is for 46 days) and employs a multi-model fusion to provide an improved 24-hour prediction of PM2.5 pollutant concentration all over Beijing. During the above process, two focal feature groups are composed. The first focal feature group contains the historical meteorological data, while the second group includes the statistical information, the date information and the polynomial variations. Besides the two groups, we complement one million more data items by employing the time sliding means. Among the supplementary data, we select the most critical 500 features with Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) model and send the features as the input to Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) and LightGBM models. Meanwhile, we screen the most critical 300 features with eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and send them as the input to the three prediction models. Referring to each of the models, we respectively gain the optimal parameters through grid search methods and then fuse the models' contribution with the linear weighting. The experiments indicate that the proposed approach based on the weighting fusion is better than that provided by a single modeling scheme, and the loss value is 0.4158 under the SMAPE index. • An approach of predicting air quality with fusing the multiple machine learning models. • The machine learning solutions to model PM2.5 pollutant concentration distribution feature. • The time sliding means for developing one million more data items. • The fusion of multiple models under linear weighting strategy. The experiments indicate that the approach based on the weighting fusion is better than that provided by the single modeling scheme, and the loss value is 0.4158 under the SMAPE index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan area is a significant carbon emission center. The region's early achievement of peak carbon targets is critical to the nation's achievement of peak carbon targets. In this paper, it is proposed to use different orders of grey models to classify into three scenarios. Based on three scenarios, the grey multivariate convolutional model with new information priority accumulation is adopted to predict carbon emissions in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and select the scenario suitable for local development. The results show that: (1) The Beijing region has already achieved peak carbon, the Tianjin region may not reach its peak carbon target by 2030, and the Hebei region is expected to reach its peak carbon target by 2030. (2) The high rate of carbon emission reduction scenario will greatly improve the air quality of Beijing. The low-speed growth carbon emission scenario is more in line with the future development of Tianjin city. The low-rate carbon reduction scenario is more in line with the synergistic governance of pollution reduction and carbon reduction in Hebei Province. (3) Beijing's population policy in the most recent years has been conducive to improving the local environment. Tianjin's medium-term population policy is more in line with the local area. Hebei's medium-term industrial structure reform is favorable to local development. • Grey correlation analysis is used to analyze the factors affected carbon emissions in a region. • The factors with high correlation are predicted by using grey prediction models of different orders. • The high rate of carbon emission reduction scenario will greatly improve the air quality of Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the substantial traffic emissions in urban areas, especially near road areas, the concentrations of pollutants, such as ozone (O 3) and its precursors, have a large difference compared to regional averages, and their distributions cannot be captured accurately by traditional single-scale air quality models. In this study, a new version of a regional urban–street network model (an Integrated Air Quality Modeling System coupling regional urban–street: IAQMS-street v2.0) is presented. An upscaling module is implemented in IAQMS-street v2.0 to calculate the impact of mass transfer to regional scale from street network. The influence of pollutants in the street network is considered in the concentration calculation on the regional scale, which is not considered in a previous version (IAQMS-street v1.0). In this study, the simulated results in Beijing during August 2021, using IAQMS-street v2.0, IAQMS-street v1.0, and the regional model (Nested Air Quality Prediction Modeling System, NAQPMS), are compared. On-road traffic emissions in Beijing, as the key model input data, were established using intelligent image-recognition technology and real-time traffic big data from navigation applications. The simulated results showed that the O 3 and nitrogen oxide (NO x) concentrations in Beijing were reproduced by using IAQMS-street v2.0 on both the regional scale and street scale. The prediction fractions within a factor of 2 (FAC2s) between simulations and observations of NO and NO 2 increased from 0.11 and 0.34 in NAQPMS to 0.78 and 1.00 in IAQMS-street v2.0, respectively. The normalized mean biases (NMBs) of NO and NO 2 decreased from 2.67 and 1.33 to -0.25 and 0.08. In the coupled model, the concentration of NO x at the street scale is higher than that at the regional scale, and the simulated distribution of pollutants on a regional scale was improved in IAQMS-street v2.0 when compared with that in IAQMS-street v1.0. We further used IAQMS-street v2.0 to quantify the contribution of local on-road traffic emissions to the O 3 and NO x emissions and analyze the effect of traffic regulation policies in Beijing. Results showed that heavy-duty trucks are the major source of on-road traffic emissions of NO x. The relative contributions of local traffic emissions to NO 2 , NO, and O 3 concentrations were 53.41 %, 57.45 %, and 8.49 %, respectively. We found that traffic regulation policies in Beijing largely decreased the concentrations of NO x and hydrocarbons (HC); however, the O 3 concentration near the road increased due to the decrease consumption of O 3 by NO. To decrease the O 3 concentration in urban areas, controlling the local emissions of HC and NO x from other sources requires consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) height (PBLH) is an important parameter for weather, climate, and air quality models. Radiosonde is one of the most commonly used instruments for PBLH determination and is generally accepted as a standard for other methods. However, mainstream approaches for the estimation of PBLH from radiosonde present some uncertainties and even show disadvantages under some circumstances, and the results need to be visually verified, especially during the transition period of different PBL regimes. To avoid the limitations of individual methods and provide a benchmark estimation of PBLH, we propose an ensemble method based on high-resolution radiosonde data collected in Beijing in 2017. Seven existing methods including four gradient-based methods are combined along with statistical modification. The ensemble method is verified at 08:00, 14:00, and 20:00 Beijing time (BJT = UTC + 8), respectively. The overestimation of PBLH can be effectively eliminated by setting thresholds for gradient-based methods, and the inconsistency between individual methods can be reduced by clustering. Based on the statistics of a 1-year observational analysis, the effectiveness (E) of the ensemble method reaches up to 62.6 %, an increase of 6.5 %–53.0 % compared to the existing methods. Nevertheless, the ensemble method suffers to some extent from uncertainties caused by the consistent overestimation of PBLH, the profiles with a multi-layer structure, and the intermittent turbulence in the stable boundary layer (SBL). Finally, this method has been applied to characterize the diurnal and seasonal variations of different PBL regimes. Particularly, the average convective boundary layer (CBL) height is found to be the highest in summer, and the SBL is lowest in summer with about 200 m. The average PBLH at the transition stage lies around 1100 m except in winter. These findings imply that the ensemble method is reliable and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air contamination is identified with individuals' wellbeing and furthermore affects the sustainable development of economy and society. This paper gathered the time series data of seven meteorological conditions variables of Beijing city from 1 November 2013 to 31 October 2017 and utilized the generalized regression neural network optimized by the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO-GRNN) to explore seasonal disparity in the impacts of mean atmospheric humidity, maximum wind velocity, insolation duration, mean wind velocity and rain precipitation on air quality index (AQI). The results showed that in general, the most significant impacting factor on air quality in Beijing is insolation duration, mean atmospheric humidity, and maximum wind velocity. In spring and autumn, the meteorological diffusion conditions represented by insolation duration and mean atmospheric humidity had a significant effect on air quality. In summer, temperature and wind are the most significant variables influencing air quality in Beijing; the most important reason for air contamination in Beijing in winter is the increase in air humidity and the deterioration of air diffusion condition. This study investigates the seasonal effects of meteorological conditions on air contamination and suggests a new research method for air quality research. In future studies, the impacts of different variables other than meteorological conditions on air quality should be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An innovative approach of mean emission by vehicle type was used in this paper to assess the impact of new vehicle emission standards in Beijing, China during the period of 2000-2005. It was found that CO and NO emissions decreased by 48% and 23%, respectively, from Type O (before 2000) to Type I (year 2000) vehicles. The reductions from Type O to Type II (year 2002) vehicles were 85% and 73% for CO and NO, respectively. When all three types of vehicles (Types O, I and II) are combined, the annual per vehicle CO emissions decreased from 586 kg per vehicle per year in 2000 to 324 kg per vehicle per year in 2005, while that of NO decreased from 66.9 to 43.4 kg per vehicle per year, which was mainly resulted from the impact of stringent new vehicle emission standards implemented in years 2000 and 2002. However, the vehicle population increased by 70% during the same time period, which offset the impact of cleaner vehicles. Thus, the total vehicle emission decreased little for CO (885,000 tons in 2000, 837,000 tons in 2005) and even increased slightly for NO (101,000 and 112,000 tons in 2000 and 2005, respectively). The ambient concentrations of CO decreased significantly throughout 2000-2005, the same trend was not observed for NO. Correlation analysis (grey correlation and Pearson correlation) between the annual vehicle emissions and annual concentrations of CO, the annual NO emission and annual NO concentration indicated that the implementation of new vehicle emission standards was associated with the abatement of ambient CO and NO concentrations in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharp rise in internet technology, and the influence of social media, along with the widespread use of affordable, intelligent devices, have significantly altered the way that users obtain information. The task here is to profit from massive amounts of data and the competence of the public to detect, when, and how the information is distributed, what people think or talk about it in social networks. Poor air quality is a grave concern for public health. Efficient and practical approaches are needed to detect harmful emissions. This paper evaluates the possible use of social networking sites by comparing Twitter data and justifying it with existing air monitoring stations to observe the air contamination of a metropolitan city. An Extended Temporary Memory (ETM) approach to air quality forecasting is proposed in this paper; besides, meteorological data are utilized with public perception, and Air Quality Forecast (AQF) response using social media is examined. Daily data on Air Quality (AQ), climatological conditions, and Weibo reception statistics have been collected in the city of Beijing, between January 2019 and December 2019. As a proxy for audience response, the mean emotion of the relevant posts has been used. Based on real figures, the performance of the proposed model has been assessed. Qualitative findings show that, out of 71.2% of air quality notifications, 80.7% of which were the first-hand study. Among the results, 31% reported aggressive behavior, while 20% shared a concern about safety. The findings have demonstrated that the suggested approach, which requires community feedback records, is ideally adapted for forecasting pollution levels in serious short-tenure communal incidents and offers rapid societal evaluation and ecological recommendations. • Measured the regular average, and deleted records of null values. • Include average daily temperature, dew level, moisture, intensity, humidity. • This paper evaluates the possible use of social networking sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone in Beijing often exceed healthful levels in recent years, therefore China is to taking steps to improve Beijing's air quality for the 2008 Olympic Games. In this paper, the Models-3 Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System was used to investigate a heavy air pollution episode in Beijing during 3-7 April 2005 to obtain the basic information of how heavy air pollution formed and the contributions of local sources and surround emissions. The modeling domain covered from East Asia with four nested grids with 81 to 3 km horizontal resolution focusing on urban Beijing. This was coupled with a regional emissions inventory with a 10 km resolution and a local 1 km Beijing emissions database. The trend of predicted concentrations of various pollutants agreed reasonably well with the observations and captured the main features of this heavy pollution episode. The simulated column concentration distribution of PM was correlated well with the MODIS remote sensing products. Control runs with and without Beijing emissions were conducted to quantify the contributions of non-Beijing sources (NBS) to the Beijing local air pollution. The contributions of NBS to each species differed spatially and temporally with the order of PM2.5>PM10>SO2> soil for this episode. The percentage contribution of NBS to fine particle (PM2.5) in Beijing was averaged about 39%, up to 53% at the northwest of urban Beijing and only 15% at southwest. The spatial distribution of NBS contributions for PM10 was similar to that for PM2.5, with a slightly less average percentage of about 30%. The average NBS contributions for SO2 and soil (diameter between 2.5µm and 10µm) were 18% and 10%. In addition, the pollutant transport flux was calculated and compared at different levels to investigate transport pathway and magnitude. It was found that the NBS contribution correlated with the transport flux, contributing 60% of PM10 concentration in Beijing at the time of transport flux peak during a strong episode with a transport path from southwest to northeast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the industrialization of society, air pollution has become a critical environmental issue, leading to excessive morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in humans. Accurate air pollution prediction has strongly promoted air quality control, which is important for human health. However, previous studies have failed to model spatiotemporal dependencies simultaneously with non-Euclidean distributions considering meteorological factors. In this study, a novel multigraph convolutional neural network for air pollution prediction is proposed. First, a spatial graph, an air pollution pattern graph and a meteorological pattern graph are constructed to model different relationships among non-Euclidean areas. Second, the graph convolutional network is applied to learn and incorporate the information of neighbour nodes of the corresponding graph, and then the graphs after convolution are fused. Finally, the fused matrix of GCNs is input into the gate recurrent units to capture temporal dependencies. Experimental results on the real dataset collected at air quality monitoring stations in Beijing validate the effectiveness of our proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme weather events are happening more frequently as a result of global climate change. Dust storms broke out in the spring of 2017 in China and drastically impacted the local air quality. In this study, a variety of data, including aerosol vertical profiles, surface particle concentration, meteorological parameters, and MODIS–derived aerosol optical depth, as well as backward trajectory analysis, were employed to analyze two dust events from April to May in Beijing. The dust plumes were mainly concentrated below 0.8 km, with peak PM10 values of 1000 μg·m−3 and 300 μg·m−3 in the two cases. The aerosols showed different vertical distribution characteristics. The pure dust in case 1 from 4 to 5 May 2017 had a longer duration (2 days) and presented a larger aerosol extinction coefficient (2.27 km−1 at 355 nm and 1.25 km−1 at 532 nm) than that of the mixed dust in case 2 on 17 April 2017 (2.01 km−1 at 355 nm and 1.33 km−1 at 532 nm). The particle depolarization ratio (PDR) remained constant (0.24 ± 0.03 in case 1) from the surface to 0.8 km in height. In contrast, the PDR profile in the mixed dust (case 2) layer was split into two regions—large values exceeding 0.15 above 0.6 km and small values of 0.11 ± 0.03 below 0.6 km. The influence of meteorological information on aerosol distribution was also investigated, and wind was predominant through the observing period. The pure dust in case 1 was mainly from Mongolia, with strong northwest winds, while the near-surface mixed pollution was caused by the combination of long-transported sand and local emission. Furthermore, lidar-derived profiles of dust mass concentrations in the two cases were presented. This study reveals the vertical characteristics of dust aerosols in the production and dissipation of localized dust events and confirms the efficacy of thorough observations with multiple approaches from the ground to space to monitor dust events in real time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive measurements are vital to obtain big enough datasets for better understanding the complex atmosphere and further improving the air quality. To investigate the 4-year variation of air quality and the influences of special events (Beijing Winter Olympics, COVID lockdown and Chinese New Year) on it during the wintertime in polluted urban air, we conducted comprehensive observations in Beijing, China, during 1 January–20 February, in the years from 2019 to 2022. The mass concentration of PM 2.5 and its composition (organics, nitrate, sulfate, ammonium, chloride and black carbon) and the number size distributions of particles (down to ∼1 nm) and ions, gaseous pollutants (CO, NO x , SO 2 , O 3) and condensable vapors (sulfuric acid and oxygenated organic molecules), as well as meteorological parameters, were simultaneously measured. The days before 22 January without any special events in each year were selected to investigate the 4-year variability of air quality. We found that the concentrations of CO, NO x , total oxygenated organic molecules (OOMs), total PM 2.5 , organics, chloride and black carbon and the number concentration of sub-3 nm particles (N1.3-3) showed similar variations, decreasing from 2019 to 2021 and then increasing in 2022. For SO 2 , however, its concentration decreased year by year due to the significant emission reduction, further leading to the decrease of gaseous sulfuric acid and particulate sulfate from 2019 to 2022. O 3 concentration showed an opposite 4-year variation compared with NO x. Meanwhile, both the oxygen and nitrogen contents of oxygenated organic molecules increased year by year, implying that not only the oxidation state of those compounds increased, but also NO x was involved more efficiently in their formation processes. With higher sulfuric acid concentrations and new particle formation (NPF) frequencies in 2021 than in 2022, and with the lowest concentrations of background aerosols and the lowest ambient temperatures in 2021, N1.3-3 was still the lowest in 2021. Unlike N1.3-3 , the ion concentrations in both 0.8–2 and 2–4 nm size ranges were higher in 2021 than in the other years. Then, the days after 4 February were chosen to explore the influence of special events. The non-event days within this date range in 2019 and 2021 were chosen as the reference period. Due to the favorable meteorological conditions together with reductions in anthropogenic emissions, there were basically no haze events during the Olympics. Therefore, CO, NO x , SO 2 , total OOMs, accumulation-mode particles (N100-1000), and total PM 2.5 and its composition were much lower, while ion concentrations were much higher compared with the reference period. Although there was also emission reduction during COVID, especially for NO x , the enhancement of secondary inorganic aerosol formation, together with unfavorable meteorological conditions, caused severe haze events during this period. Hence, CO, total OOMs and all PM 2.5 compositions during COVID increased dramatically compared with the reference period. Influenced by SO 2 , condensation sink and sunlight, sulfuric acid concentration was found to be comparable between the Olympics and the reference period but was lower during COVID and Chinese New Year. Additionally, N1.3-3 was almost at the same level during different periods, indicating that the special events only had little impact on the NPF processes. These results provide useful information to the development of more targeted pollution control plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning provides a promising approach for air pollution prediction. The existing deep learning-based predicted models generally consider either the temporal correlations of air quality monitoring stations or the nonlinear relationship between the PM2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm) concentrations and explanatory variables. Spatial correlation has not been effectively incorporated into prediction models, therefore exhibiting poor performance in PM2.5 prediction tasks. Additionally, determining the manner by which to expand longer-term prediction tasks is still challenging. In this paper, to allow for spatiotemporal correlations, a spatiotemporal convolutional recursive long short-term memory (CR-LSTM) neural network model is proposed for predicting the PM2.5 concentrations in long-term prediction tasks by combining a convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) neural network and a recursive strategy. Herein, the ConvLSTM network was used to capture the complex spatiotemporal correlations and to predict the future PM2.5 concentrations; the recursive strategy was used for expanding the long-term prediction tasks. The CR-LSTM model was used to realize the prediction of the future 24 h of PM2.5 concentrations for 12 air quality monitoring stations in Beijing by configuring both the appropriate time lag derived from the temporal correlations and the spatial neighborhood, including the hourly historical PM2.5 concentrations, the daily mean meteorological data, and the annual nighttime light and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The results showed that the proposed CR-LSTM model achieved better performance (coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.74; root mean square error (RMSE) = 18.96 μg/m3) than other common models, such as multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector regression (SVR), the conventional LSTM model, the LSTM extended (LSTME) model, and the temporal sliding LSTM extended (TS-LSTME) model. The proposed CR-LSTM model, implementing a combination of geographical rules, recursive strategy, and deep learning, shows improved performance in longer-term prediction tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time dynamic varying coefficient models play an important role in applications of biology, medicine, environment, finance, etc. Traditional methods, such as kernel smoothing and spline smoothing, are popular. But explicit expressions are unavailable using these methods, and the convergence rate of coefficient function estimators is slow. To address these problems, we expand the varying component with appropriate basis functions. And then we solve a sparse regression problem via a sequential thresholded least-squares estimator. The "parameterization" leads to explicit expressions and fast computation speed. Convergence of the sequential thresholded least squares algorithm is guaranteed. The asymptotic distribution of the coefficient function estimator is derived under certain assumptions. Our simulation shows the proposed method has higher precision and computing speed. Finally, our proposed method is applied to the study of PM 2.5 concentration in Beijing. We analyze the relationship between PM 2.5 and other impact factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the Beijing resident's preferences over various options of urban forest management strategies. The literature investigation and expert Delphi method were conducted to classify the ecosystem services of urban forests into six categories: (1) fresh water provision, (2) noise reduction, (3) moderation of extreme events, (4) air quality regulation, (5) species diversity and wildlife habitat, and (6) recreation and spiritual experience. To elicit the relative preferences to ecosystem service (hereafter referred to as ES) of Beijing residents, we employed the choice experiment method. The data were collected by interviews with questionnaires conducted in October 2017, and a total of 483 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The subjects of this experiment were residents older than 19 years old who have lived in Beijing for more than 1 year and have visited any one of the urban forests located in Beijing more than once during 2016. The results were as follows: Firstly, the air quality regulation ES was considered as the most important service for Beijing residents in terms of their choices of urban forest. In addition, Beijing residents regarded the fresh water provision ES as the second most important ES. Beijing residents were willing to pay up to 1.84% of the average monthly income of Chinese households annually to expand urban forest ecosystems in order to improve air quality. Secondly, apartment owners were willing to pay more municipality tax for forest ESs than residents who did not own an apartment. Thirdly, residents were more willing to pay for urban forest ESs as their income increases. The results indicated that Beijing residents were willing to pay more tax in support of urban forestry for air quality improvement. This research suggests that urban environmental policy makers in Beijing should pay more attention to the regulation function of forests (especially improving air quality) when designing and managing urban forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]