Spatiotemporal variation and source analysis of air pollutants in the Harbin-Changchun (HC) region of China during 2014-2020

Yulong Wang; Youwen Sun; Zhiqing Zhang; Yuan Cheng

doi:10.1016/j.ese.2021.100126

Spatiotemporal variation and source analysis of air pollutants in the Harbin-Changchun (HC) region of China during 2014-2020

Environ Sci Ecotechnol. 2021 Sep 15:8:100126. doi: 10.1016/j.ese.2021.100126. eCollection 2021 Oct.

Authors

Yulong Wang¹, Youwen Sun², Zhiqing Zhang¹, Yuan Cheng¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090, China.
² Key Laboratory of Environmental Optics and Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China.

Abstract

This study analyzed the characteristics of air pollution and specific pollution periods within the Harbin-Changchun (HC) metropolitan area during 2014-2020. Regarding annual, seasonal, and monthly variations of the six pollutants, the change trend in 11 cities of HC showed strong consistency in spatial distribution. The western cities (Songyuan, Daqing, and Siping) were vulnerable to dust storms from Inner Mongolia. The concentrations of all air pollutants, except O₃-8h, showed downward fluctuation trends from 2014 to 2018 and remained stable from 2018 to 2020 in terms of annual variations. The inter-annual trend of significant reductions in SO₂ and SO₂/PM_2.5 during the heating period indicated that strict emission reduction measures posed by the government were highly successful. The ratio of PM_2.5/SO₂ was used to identify open biomass burning (OBB), which showed a double peak (October-November (Oct-Nov), March-April (Mar-Apr)). The burning prohibition shifted the OBB from Oct-Nov to Mar-Apr.

Keywords: Air pollution; Harbin-changchun metropolitan area; Open biomass burning; Spatiotemporal variations.