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Aerosol optical properties under the condition of heavy haze over an urban site of Beijing, China

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Abstract

In January 2013, several serious haze pollution events happened in North China. Cimel sunphotometer measurements at an urban site of Beijing (Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences—CAMS) from 1 to 30 January 2013 were used to investigate the detailed variation of aerosol optical properties. It was found that Angstrom exponents were mostly larger than 0.80 when aerosol optical depth values are higher than 0.60 at the urban region of Beijing during January 2013. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) at the urban region of Beijing can remain steady at approximately 0.40 before haze happening and then increased sharply to more than 1.50 at 500 nm with the onset of haze, which suggests that the fine-mode AOD is a factor of 20 of the coarse-mode AOD during a serious haze pollution event. The single scattering albedo was approximately 0.90 ± 0.03 at 440, 675, 870 and 1,020 nm during the haze pollution period. The single scattering albedo at 440 nm as a function of the fine-mode fraction was relatively consistent, but it was highly variable at 675, 870 and 1,020 nm. Except on January 12 and 18, all the fine-mode particle volumes were larger than those of coarse particles, which suggests that fine particles from anthropogenic activities made up most of the haze. Aerosol type classification analysis showed that the dominant aerosol types can be classified as both “mixed” and “urban/industrial (U/I) and biomass burning (BB)” categories during the heavy haze period of Beijing in January of 2013. The mixed category occurrence was about 31 %, while the U/I and BB was about 69 %.

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Acknowledgments

This work is financially supported by grants from the National Key Project of Basic Research (2014CB441201), the Project (41375153 and 41130104) supported by NSFC, the Meteorological Special Project of China (GYHY-200906038 201206037), the Strategic Priority Research Programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05100301), and the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Climate Change. The Cimel master calibration of CARSNET was performed at the AERONET-EUROPE calibration center (LOA and AEMET-Tenerife), supported by ACTRIS (European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)) under grant agreement no. 262254.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry (LAC), Institute of Atmospheric Composition, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CAMS), CMA, 46 Zhong-Guan-Cun S. Ave., Beijing, 100081, China

    Huizheng Che, Hong Wang, Yaqiang Wang, Junying Sun & Xiaoye Zhang

  2. Laboratory for Middle Atmosphere and Global Environment Observation (LAGEO), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Xiangao Xia & Jun Zhu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Guangyu Shi

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  1. Huizheng Che
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  2. Xiangao Xia
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  3. Jun Zhu
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  4. Hong Wang
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  5. Yaqiang Wang
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  6. Junying Sun
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  7. Xiaoye Zhang
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  8. Guangyu Shi
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Correspondence to Huizheng Che.

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Responsible editor: Gerhard Lammel

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Che, H., Xia, X., Zhu, J. et al. Aerosol optical properties under the condition of heavy haze over an urban site of Beijing, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 1043–1053 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3415-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3415-5

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