Modeling Urban Air Quality in Beijing during the Olympic Summer Games 2008

Air pollution is one of the most significant environmental concerns in China today, particularly in the highly industrialized Eastern Chinese mega cities. During the Olympic Summer Games in 2008, the air pollution in China’s capital city of Beijing became an issue of international interest. Air pollution in Beijing has a number of key constituent components, including anthropogenic gaseous pollutants, and small airborne particles from natural and anthropogenic sources. These often exceed WHO recommended levels. To investigate the influence of anthropogenic nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ozone (O3) on the air quality in Beijing and its vicinity, the fully online coupled model system COSMO-ART is applied for the first time to Northern China. For this purpose a five-day simulation period from August 4th to 8th in 2008 was conducted. The simulated NOx and O3 concentrations are compared to observations from a measurement station located in Beijing. Backward trajectories are calculated to get more information about the source areas of the air pollutants. Comparisons of measured and modeled NOx and O3 showed that the daily course of the concentrations can be reproduced by the model very well.