Research articleMonitoring history and change trends of ambient air quality in China during the past four decades
Introduction
In the decades since the start of the Reform and Opening-up in 1978, China has experienced rapid industrialization, urbanization, and motorization (Chan and Yao, 2008; Kan et al., 2012; Rohde and Muller, 2015). Consequently, air pollution has become an increasingly severe environmental issue because of the marked growth in energy consumption and the resulting multiple pollutant emissions (Chan and Yao, 2008; Rohde and Muller, 2015). However, in response to the increasing hazard posed by air pollution, the Chinese government has both implemented a series of policies, measures and regulations designed to prevent and control air pollution and adopted certain concrete actions to improve regional air quality (Jin et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2011b, 2016b, 2017).
Considerable attention has been given to urban ambient air quality, especially regarding the negative effects of urban air pollution on human health, climate change, and visibility (Huang et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Maji et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2015). The air quality trend is of primary concern, and recent research has indicated that worldwide trends in ambient air quality typically show reductions in the concentration of certain pollutants, e.g., SO2 and NO2 (MEP, 2017, 2018; Zhang et al., 2011b). With growing public awareness of the detrimental effects of air pollution, numerous empirical studies have focused overwhelmingly on the spatiotemporal variations of air pollution, which are vital for evaluation of the health risks associated with human exposure (Kan et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2011a, 2016a). Previous studies have examined the spatial characteristics of air pollution on scales ranging from the local to the regional scale (Chan and Yao, 2008; Chen et al., 2017; Hu et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2018; Ma et al., 2014; Wang and Fang, 2016; Yang et al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2018b). However, most of studies on ambient air quality conducted in China have focused largely on reasonably small areas or regions (Zhan et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2011b), e.g., major metropolitan cities such as Beijing (Chen et al., 2015; Zhai et al., 2018), Shanghai (Liu et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2015), and Guangzhou (Chan and Yao, 2008; Wang et al., 2016) and on urban agglomerations such as Jing-Jin-Ji (Chen et al., 2017), the Bohai Rim (Wang and Fang, 2016), and the Yangtze River Delta (Hu et al., 2014). The lack of comprehensive air quality data has meant that systematic nationwide research on the history of air quality monitoring is lacking, and that the spatiotemporal variations of air pollution in China on the national scale, based on ground monitoring data, are not fully understood (Engel-Cox et al., 2013; Zhan et al., 2017). Although the Chinese government does release national reports on quarterly/annual environmental quality or five-year environmental quality (MEP, 2017, 2018; MEE, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c), reports and studies on the long-term trends of environmental air quality are rare.
The year 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of the Reform and Opening-up in China. Improved understanding and systematic study of the history of the monitoring of ambient air quality, as well as investigation of the temporal changes and spatial distribution patterns of air pollutants, and the measures adopted for control and prevention of air pollution in China, are essential for the formation of effective management strategies regarding urban air pollution control. This study summarized the history of air quality monitoring in China in terms of the determinants monitoring extent, monitoring methods, ambient air quality standards, and requirements regarding data validation. Moreover, the history of the control and prevention of air pollution in China was established and the spatiotemporal patterns of air pollutants since the 1980s were analyzed. The results of this study provide an environmental monitoring history and constitute reliable information on the spatiotemporal patterns of air quality in China that could represent a useful resource for the public and ongoing scientific research.
Section snippets
Study area
With consideration of the availability and integrity of both monitoring history data and air quality data, the study area for this research comprised mainland China, including all 338 cities at or above prefecture level (including municipalities, cities, or regions at prefecture level, autonomous prefectures, and leagues; hereafter, referred to as the 338 cities). However, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan were excluded from the study because of the lack of complete data sets.
Data sources
Monitoring history and
Monitoring history on ambient air quality in China
In China, monitoring of environmental quality began in the early 1970s, and increasing numbers of provincial- and city-level environmental monitoring stations were established over subsequent years as a reflection of China's economic and technological development (Fig. 1). Currently, China has a four-tiered environmental monitoring system that comprises national-, provincial-, municipal-, and county-level environmental monitoring stations. Over past years, large amounts of environmental quality
TSP, dust, and PM10
From the 1980s to the end of 20th century, the prevention of coal dust pollution was the focus of air pollution prevention and control in China. Monitoring data indicated that both the annual concentration of TSP (Fig. 3) and the annual amount of dust showed trends of decrease during this time (Fig. 4). From 1981 to 2000, the annual average concentration of TSP decreased from 0.702 to 0.258 mg/m3 (a decrease of 63.2%) and the annual amount of dust fell from 33.97 to 14.21 t/km2 (a decline of
Discussion
In this study, the history of the monitoring of ambient air quality in China during 1981–2018 was summarized. The determinants, monitoring extent, monitoring methods, ambient air quality standards, and requirements regarding data validation were also considered. The evolution of measures adopted for the prevention and control of air pollution was discussed, and the spatiotemporal patterns of ambient air quality during the previous four decades were analyzed. To our knowledge, this represents
Conclusions
After 40 years’ development, China has established the national ambient air quality monitoring network, which is the largest air quality monitoring network in the developing countries. Monitoring of ambient air quality in China has followed a path of gradual transition from less to more and from coarse particles to fine PM. Monitoring of air pollutants in China has evolved from a manual process into comprehensive automatic monitoring. The ambient air quality has become more strictly, and the
Declaration of competing interest
All authors declare to have no conflict of interest to disclose in the context with this study.
Acknowledgments
The present study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 41401101, NO.41601608 & NO.41371118), Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco-Restoration (SHUES 2016A01,SHUES 2019A10), Hebei University of Economics and Business's School Fund Project (2014KYQ01, 2014JYQ02), National Natural Science Foundation of Hebei, China (D2015207002). The authors wish to thank all the staff members at China National Environmental Monitoring Center for their strong
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These authors contributed equally to this work.