Abstract
In addition to the impact of pollutant emissions, haze pollution is connected with meteorology and climate change. Based on the interannual change analyses of meteorological and environmental observation data from 1981 to 2010, we studied the relationship between the winter haze frequency in central-eastern China (CEC) and the interannual variations of sea surface temperature (SST) over Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) and its underlying mechanism to explore the thermal effect of WPWP on haze pollution variation in China. The results show a significant positive correlation coefficient reaching up to 0.61 between the interannual variations of SST in WPWP and haze pollution frequency in the CEC region over 1981–2010, reflecting the WPWP’s thermal forcing exerting an important impact on haze variation in China. The anomalies of thermal forcing of WPWP could induce to the changes of East Asian winter monsoonal winds and the vertical thermal structures in the troposphere over the CEC region. In the winter with anomalously warm SST over the WPWP, the near-surface winds were declined, and vertical thermal structure in the lower troposphere tended to be stable over the CEC-region, which could be conducive to air pollutant accumulation leading to the more frequent haze occurrences especially the heavy haze regions of Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD); In the winter with the anomalously cold WPWP, it is only the reverse of warm WPWP with the stronger East Asian winter monsoonal winds and the unstable thermal structure in the lower troposphere, which could attribute to the less frequent haze pollution over the CEC region. Our study revealed that the thermal forcing of the WPWP could have a modulation on air environment change in China.
Highlights
Haze refers to an environmental phenomenon with a large number of fine particles suspending in ambient air, generally resulting in pervasive air turbidity with the horizontal visibility reducing to lower than 10 km [1]
It is generally accepted that air stagnation with low near-surface winds and stable vertical thermal structures in the lower troposphere could be a dominant meteorological condition for poor air diffusions leading to air pollutant accumulation for frequent haze occurrences in China [10,11]
In order to investigate the relationship between the interannual variations of wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) in Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) and the number of days with haze in the central-eastern China (CEC) region, we calculated the spatial distribution of correlation coefficients between the haze days averaged over the CEC region and the SST in western Pacific during winters of 1980–2010
Summary
Haze refers to an environmental phenomenon with a large number of fine particles suspending in ambient air, generally resulting in pervasive air turbidity with the horizontal visibility reducing to lower than 10 km [1]. The East Asian monsoons are the primary climatic components in China [16], changing the atmospheric circulations and meteorological conditions with anomalies in winds, precipitation, air temperature and humidity [17,18]. Located in a typical East Asian monsoon region, air quality over the CEC with strong pollutant emissions has been a deteriorated by haze pollution over recent years [19,20]. East Asian monsoons has experienced a steady decrease trend in interannual variations of near-surface wind speed over past decades, which could redistribute the air pollutants for air quality in China [23,24]. The haze pollution is closely associated with climate change of East Asian monsoon, besides the large increases in emissions of anthropogenic aerosols in the last three decades [4,9,25]. East Asian monsoons to more comprehensively understand the atmospheric environment changes in China
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