Abstract
Air pollution in North China (NC) is an important issue affecting the economy and health. In this study, we used a regional climate model, the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) to project air pollution in NC and investigate the variations of air pollutions response to future climate changes, which probably has an implication to strategy and control policy for air quality in NC. A comprehensive model evaluation was conducted to verify the simulated aerosol optical depth (AOD) based on MODIS and MISR datasets, and the model also showed reasonable results in aerosol concentrations. Future changes of air pollution in the middle of the 21st century (2031–2050) were projected in the two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and compared with the situation in the historical period (1986–2005). In the two RCPs, the simulated averaged PM2.5 concentration was projected with the highest values of 50–250 μg·m−3 over the Bohai Rim Economic Circle (BREC) in winter. The maximum AOD is in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region in summer, with an average value of 0.68. In winter, in the RCP4.5 scenario, PM2.5 concentration and AOD obviously declined in BTH and Shandong province. However, in the RCP8.5 scenario, PM2.5 concentration and AOD increased. Results indicated that air pollution would be reduced in winter if society developed in the low emission pathway. Precipitation was projected to increase both in the two RCPs scenarios in spring, summer, and winter, but it was projected to decrease in autumn. The planetary boundary layer height decreased in the two RCPs scenarios in the central region of NC in the summer and winter. The results indicated that changes of meteorological conditions have great impact on air pollution in future scenarios.
Highlights
With the development of the economy and urbanization, China has been suffering from an air pollution problem in the past two decades
The results have shown that the low planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) [26], the weakening of northerly winds [27], the decrease of relative humidity [28], and the increase of sea level temperature [29] have led to the increase of winter haze in eastern China
We focused on the projection of air pollutions in North China (NC) in the two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios based on a high-resolution regional climate model WRF-Chem V.3.9.1
Summary
With the development of the economy and urbanization, China has been suffering from an air pollution problem in the past two decades. Many previous studies revealed that in China, a significant decline in air quality has become more serious [1,2]. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) [5] listed air pollution as the most important environmental problem that threatens public health and causes about 7 million deaths worldwide every year. Air pollution in China is worse than other countries in. A large number of previous studies have demonstrated that the effects of aerosol pollution on climate change were significant [9,10]. In the period of 1978–2017, more than 550 million migrants moved to cities, resulting in a large rising of urban population from 18 to 57% [11].
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