Estimation of background concentration of PM in Beijing using a statistical integrated approach

Abstract The high concentrations of particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5 ) air pollutants in China are of great concern to public health. To develop efficient and effective environment control policies, an understanding of PM background concentrations is therefore essential. In this study, we estimated background concentrations of PM 10 and PM 2.5 in Beijing from January to December 2016, using an integrated approach that involved meteorological filtering, backward trajectory modelling, spectral analysis and a Kolmogorov–Zurbenko (KZ) filter. The estimated annual average background concentration of PM 10 was 47 μg/m 3 (ranging from 37 to 71 μg/m 3 ), while PM 2.5 averaged 25 μg/m 3 (ranging from 18 to 37 μg/m 3 ). The contribution of background pollution to the ambient concentration of PM was 37–68% for PM 10 and 21–54% for PM 2.5 , which is comparable to other studies. The estimated background concentrations from this study were assessed using the Community Multi-scale Air Quality results published by Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. Our method has great potential for estimating PM pollutants and could also be applied to other pollutants.