Impact of Inter-Annual Variation in Meteorology from 2010 to 2019 on the Inter-City Transport of PM2.5 in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region

Abstract

Air pollution has become a great challenge to achieving sustainable development. Among the pollutants, aerosols significantly affect human health and play an important role in global climate change. The concentration of aerosols in the ambient air is influenced strongly by the regional transport of pollutants and their precursors and may vary considerably under different meteorological conditions in different years. This inter-annual variation in meteorology may yield conflicting results in the quantification of the contribution from regional transport of air pollutants. It creates uncertainty for local governments to develop pollution control measures to reduce the challenges to sustainable development. Previous studies on this issue are often year-specific or cover short time spans, and the inter-city transport of air pollutants in the long term is still not fully understood. Therefore, in this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model was used to assess inter-annual variations in the contribution of inter-city transport to the PM2.5 concentration in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 2010 to 2019. To highlight the impact of inter-annual variations in meteorology, the authors used the same emission inventory and the same model configurations for the 10-year simulation. The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Both PM2.5 concentration and inter-city transport in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region were influenced by the inter-annual variation in meteorological conditions. (2) The simulated annual average concentrations in 13 cities in BTH are highly variable, with fluctuations ranging from 30.8% to 54.1%, and more evident variations were found in seasonal results. (3) Seven out of thirteen cities have a contribution from regional transport exceeding 50%, which are located in the eastern half of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. (4) The magnitude of the regional transport contribution varies significantly among the cities of BTH, on an annual basis, from a minimum inter-annual fluctuation of 8.9% to a maximum of 37.2%, and seasonal fluctuation is even more strongly evident. These results indicate that, when formulating pollution control strategies, inter-annual changes in meteorological conditions should not be ignored.