Abstract
Recently, due to the rapid economic development and the acceleration of urbanization, haze events have occurred frequently in most parts of China, which has attracted widespread attention at home and abroad. This study presents a statistical summary of air pollution concentrations and traffic state indexes from August 2014 to April 2015 in Shanghai, China. We find PM2.5 concentrations show a remarkable seasonal variability with ``winter > spring > autumn > summer'' in Shanghai. Concentrations of PM2.5, CO, NO2, SO2 are generally higher in winter than in summer due to enhanced anthropogenic and biogenic emissions and unsuitable meteorological conditions for pollution diffusion, contrary to concentrations of O3. The weekly changes of NO2 are highly consistent with that of traffic state indexes, suggesting a significant contribution to NO2 concentrations from road traffic emissions. Two moderate peaks are found in the diurnal variability of concentrations of PM2.5, CO and NO2, similar to road traffic indexes, indicating the important contribution of road traffic emissions every day. We find that SO2, NO2, CO are the dominant factors contributing to PM2.5 pollution, where NO2 and CO are mainly from road traffic emissions. The average annual Spearman correlation coefficient is r = 0.689 (p < 0.01), r = 0.564 (p < 0.01), r = 0.812 (p < 0.01), respectively.
Highlights
With the rapid urbanization and the continuous increase in the number of vehicles, road traffic emissions have become a major source of air pollutant in urban areas
Atmospheric pollutants emitted by road traffic, such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and non-methane hydrocarbon (THC), have caused adverse environmental pollution, in areas near major roads
The difference of the weekly variation between PM2.5 concentrations and traffic state indexes shows that the PM2.5 concentrations in Shanghai are affected by a variety of complex physical and chemical interactions among air pollutants (i.e. SO2, NO2 and O3) and various external conditions
Summary
With the rapid urbanization and the continuous increase in the number of vehicles, road traffic emissions have become a major source of air pollutant in urban areas. Atmospheric pollutants emitted by road traffic, such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and non-methane hydrocarbon (THC), have caused adverse environmental pollution, in areas near major roads. Vehicle emissions have become an important source of urban air pollution throughout the world[1]. Particulate matter (PM) is widely regarded as a major factor, which causes degrading visibility and a significant impact on human health, attracting a lot of attention from researchers at home and abroad. A macro perspective at a city level is needed to analyze the contribution of road traffic in the air pollution
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