Cleaning up the air: effectiveness of air quality policy for SO2 and NOx emissions in China

van der A, Ronald J.; Mijling, Bas; Ding, Jieying; Koukouli, Maria Elissavet; Liu, Fei; Li, Qing; Mao, Huiqin; Theys, Nicolas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-1775-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-1775-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

East Asia emissions assessment (EA2)

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-1775-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

Research article

|

06 Feb 2017

Research article |

| 06 Feb 2017

Cleaning up the air: effectiveness of air quality policy for SO₂ and NO_x emissions in China

Ronald J. van der A, Bas Mijling, Jieying Ding, Maria Elissavet Koukouli, Fei Liu, Qing Li, Huiqin Mao, and Nicolas Theys

Data sets

GOME-2/Metop-A SO2 data (version GDP 4.7) P. J. M. Valks http://atmos.caf.dlr.de/gome2/

DECSO NOx emissions (version 4) J. Ding, R. J. van der A, and B. Mijling http://www.globemission.eu/region_asia/datapage.php

Short summary

The SO₂ concentrations and NO_x emissions over China derived from satellite observations are compared with the national fossil fuel consumption and air quality regulations. It is shown that not only NO₂ concentrations but also NO_x emissions in all Chinese provinces decreased in the last 2 years. We conclude that without the air quality regulations the SO₂ concentrations would be about 2.5 times higher and the NO₂ concentrations would be at least 25 % higher than they are today in China.