China's Airpocalypse

The term ‘China Airpocalypse’ is genuinely adopted to describe the China smog 2015, and has probably gone viral in the internet and climate headlines since the beginning of the year. The nation, the northeastern region in particular, is suffering from climate and health impacts brought by the layer of smog persisted in the troposphere, yet the government seem helpless when dealing with the worsening air quality.  

Source: Australia Broadcasting Corporation 

Levels of air pollution in parts of the northeastern China hit dangerously high levels, with the concentration of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) - the number of particulates 2.5 microns or less in width within each cubic meter of air - reaching 50 times the recommended safety limit in some regions (IFL Science). Shenyang, a major city in Liaoning Province, has reached a level of 1,400 micrograms of PM 2.5, despite the WHO recommends an average of 25 micrograms or less over 24-hour period listed in its air quality guidelines. Shanghai city’s air quality index (AQI) rose above 300, a level deemed hazardous on most scales and which can have a long-term impact on health, while levels of PM 2.5 reached a record high level of 281 since January, and city authorities have issued a yellow alert advising all elderly, young and sick residents to remain indoor, which includes shut down of school events of the day. Making it sound worse, Beijing issued the capital’s ‘first red alert’ in the face of hazardous pollution levels last week, suggesting restricted vehicles on the roads, heavy vehicles banned and class dismissal. 

The video gives a general picture of how it looks like in China now. 

And I came across this video below the other day, and found it quite interesting how a local artist wished to raise public awareness on the city’s catastrophic air pollution issue by literally vacuuming  dusts in the air using an industrial vacuum, and produced a solid brick using the matter he collected. The fact that shocks me most is that how local people become indifferent to the problem and treat it as part of their daily lives. This may be part of the problem why the Chinese government is so ineffective and inefficient in tackling air pollution issues. 

The China Smog is also recognised as the ‘sulphurous smog’, the same type of smog as the London’s Great Smog in 1952. It results from a high concentration of fine particulate matter including spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs) and sulphur oxides, produced by combustion of fossil fuels (particularly coal) during industrial production. The smog can be aggravated by increased humidity and concentration of suspended particulate matter in the atmosphere. 

It is beyond disputes that the air pollution in China is contributing to the region’s, or maybe even the world’s climate change. Apart from the major climate-forcing effect (suspended particulate matter, also known as black carbons (BC), absorbs solar radiation and warms up the atmosphere) and other indirect effects like the surface albedo effect (interaction of BC and ice/snow crystals leads to melting of snow and hence positive climate forcing) and the BC cloud effect (interaction of BC and clouds alters cloud micro physics by changing the number of liquid cloud droplets that may eventually change precipitation patterns) that build upon the major effect (Bond T. C. et al. 2013), these fine particulate matter also cause health impacts that put our lives in imminent danger. 

According to WHO study, combustion-derived aerosols are particularly significant in terms of their health effects, causing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in particular (Highwood E. J., Kinnersley R. P. 2006). A report from Berkeley Earth shows that air pollution in China contributes 17% of all deaths in China, causing an average of 4,000 deaths each day. The report also illustrates how breathing in Beijing when pollution is at its worst is equivalent to smoking one and a half cigarettes per hour.  

It is important for the Chinese government to seek realistic and effective measures to mitigate its air pollution problem. Quick fixes like cutting down industrial production is nonsense and is not economically feasible, and perhaps investing in greener energy sources and higher energy-efficient production would help reducing GHGs in the long-term. I shall propose any potential economic solution in my next post.