Air Quality of Beijing and Impacts of the New Ambient Air Quality Standard

Atmosphere

Wei Chen¹  Fusheng Wang¹  Guofeng Xiao¹  Kai Wu¹  Shixuan Zhang¹ 

[1] College of Geoscience and Surveying Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), D11 Xueyuan Road, Beijing 100083, China; E-Mails:

关键词: air quality;    air pollution;    PM_2.5;    PM₁₀;   

DOI  :  10.3390/atmos6081243

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Beijing has been publishing daily reports on its air quality since 2000, and while the air pollution index (API) shows that the air quality has improved greatly since 2000, this is not the perception of Beijing’s residents. The new national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS-2012), which includes the monitoring of PM_2.5, has posed stricter standards for evaluating air quality. With the new national standard, the air quality in Beijing is calculated using both NAAQS-2012 and the previous standard. The annual attainment rate has dropped from 75.5% to 50.7%. The spatial analysis of air quality shows that only a background station could attain the national standard, while urban and suburban stations exceed the national standard. Among the six pollutants included in the NAAQS-2012, PM_2.5 is the major contributor to the air quality index (AQI) comparing with the five other pollutants. The results indicate that under previous NAAQS without PM_2.5 monitoring, the air quality has improved greatly in the past decade.  By considering PM_2.5, the air quality attainment has dropped greatly. Furthermore, a great effort is needed for local government to bring down the PM_2.5 concentration.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.