Air Quality over the Yangtze River Delta during the 2010 Shanghai Expo

Yanfen Lin; Kan Huang; Guoshun Zhuang; Joshua S. Fu; Chang Xu; Jiandong Shen; Shuyan Chen

doi:10.4209/aaqr.2012.11.0312

Air Quality over the Yangtze River Delta during the 2010 Shanghai Expo

Yanfen Lin¹, Kan Huang ¹^,2, Guoshun Zhuang ¹, Joshua S. Fu², Chang Xu³, Jiandong Shen³, Shuyan Chen⁴

¹Center for Atmospheric Chemistry Study, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
²Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
³Hangzhou Environmental Monitoring Center Station, Hangzhou, 310007, China
⁴General Affairs Division, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

Received: November 9, 2012
Revised: May 13, 2013
Accepted: May 13, 2013
Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2012.11.0312

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Cite this article:
Lin, Y., Huang, K., Zhuang, G., Fu, J.S., Xu, C., Shen, J. and Chen, S. (2013). Air Quality over the Yangtze River Delta during the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 13: 1655-1666. https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2012.11.0312

ABSTRACT

An air quality monitoring network consisting of 53 stations at 9 cities over the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) simultaneously measured gaseous and particulate pollutants (SO₂, NO₂, CO, O₃, PM_2.5 and PM₁₀) during the six-month Shanghai World Expo in 2010. The regional distribution of air pollutants showed that Shanghai was a low-SO₂-PM₁₀ zone over the YRD during the Expo, owing to the effective controls that were applied to power plants, industrial activities and construction works. However, Shanghai also became a high-NO_x-CO-O₃ zone in the YRD, partly due to the large number of vehicles in Shanghai, and also the expected increase in transportation emissions due to the tremendous number of visitors during the Expo. Monthly variations in the major pollutants generally presented similar patterns, with lower values in the middle of the Expo, i.e., from July to September, and higher values in May, June and October. The magnitudes of pollutant precursor (SO₂ and NO₂) concentrations and meteorological conditions (e.g., wind speed, directional wind from X vector, and mixing layer height) were investigated, and found to play important roles in the monthly variations. Spatial correlations of air pollutants between Shanghai and the other 8 cities revealed the impact of regional transport on air quality in Shanghai, and vice versa. Intense air pollution episodes in Shanghai were mainly related to the regional/long-range transport from inland polluted regions. The high frequency of marine winds during the Expo had a positive effect on the air quality of coastal cities, while it had a negative effect on some inland cities in the YRD.