ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-11-16655-2011 Emission controls versus meteorological conditions in determining aerosol concentrations in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games Gao Y. 1 2 Liu X. 1 Zhao C. 1 Zhang M. 2 Wang Y. 2 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry (LAPC), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 14 06 2011 11 6 16655 16691 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/16655/2011/acpd-11-16655-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/16655/2011/acpd-11-16655-2011.pdf

A series of emission control measures were undertaken in Beijing and the adjacent provinces in China during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on 8–24 August 2008. This provides a unique opportunity for investigating the effectiveness of emission controls on air pollution in Beijing. We conducted a series of numerical experiments over East Asia for the period of July to September 2008 using a coupled meteorology-chemistry model (WRF-Chem). Model can generally reproduce the observed variation of aerosol concentrations. Consistent with observations, modeled concentrations of aerosol species (sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, black carbon, organic carbon, total particulate matter) in Beijing were decreased by 30–50 % during the Olympic period compared to the other periods in July and August in 2008 and the same period in 2007. Model results indicate that emission controls were effective in reducing the aerosol concentrations by comparing simulations with and without emission controls. However, our analysis suggests that meteorological conditions (e.g., wind direction and precipitation) are at least as important as emission controls in producing the low aerosol concentrations appearing during the Olympic period. Transport from the regions surrounding Beijing determines the temporal variation of aerosol concentrations in Beijing. Based on the budget analysis, we suggest that to improve the air quality over Beijing, emission control strategy should focus on the regional scale instead of the local scale.

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