From the GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and the “never mind that industrial pollution it’s climate change driving sea ice loss wot dun it” department. Note the bolded section of the press release I highlighted.
China’s severe winter air pollution problems may be worsened by changes in atmospheric circulation prompted by Arctic sea ice loss and increased Eurasian snowfall – both caused by global climate change.
Modeling and data analysis done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest that sea ice and snowfall changes have shifted China’s winter monsoon, helping create stagnant atmospheric conditions that trap pollution over the country’s major population and industrial centers. Those changes in regional atmospheric conditions are frustrating efforts to address pollution through emission controls.
“Emissions in China have been decreasing over the last four years, but the severe winter haze is not getting better,” said Yuhang Wang, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Mostly, that’s because of a very rapid change in the high polar regions where sea ice is decreasing and snowfall is increasing. This perturbation keeps cold air from getting into the eastern parts of China where it would flush out the air pollution.”
To be reported March 15 in the journal Science Advances, the research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency. The paper presents a clear example of how large-scale perturbations caused by global climate change can have significant regional impacts, and is believed to be the first to link sea ice and snowfall levels to regional air pollution.
Haze problems in the East China Plains – which include the capital Beijing – first gained worldwide attention during the winter of 2013 when an instrument at the U.S. embassy recorded extremely high levels of PM 2.5 particles. The haze prompted the Chinese government to institute strict targets for reducing emissions from industry and other sources.
Though these emission controls appear to be working, the haze during December and January continues. So Wang and colleagues Yufei Zou, Yuzhong Zhang and Ja-Ho Koo wondered if other factors may be playing a role.
Long-term air quality measurements aren’t available in China, so the researchers had to piece together estimates based on visibility measures and satellite data. To analyze the historical records, they created a new Pollution Potential Index (PPI) that used air temperature gradient anomalies and surface wind speeds as a proxy for ventilation conditions over eastern China.
“Once we generated the PPI and combined it with the visibility data, it was obvious that January 2013 was well beyond anything that had ever been seen before going back at least three decades,” said Wang. “But in that month emissions had not changed, so we knew there had to be another factor.”
The East China Plains consist of interconnected basins surrounded by mountain ranges to the west and the ocean to the east, a mirror image of the polluted Southern California. Pollution generated by industry and vehicles can be removed effectively only by horizontal dispersion or by vertical mixing in winter, and when those processes fail to move out stagnant air, pollution builds up. It seemed likely that something was preventing the ventilation that would have kept the air cleaner.
The researchers next looked at climate features such as sea ice, snowfall, El Niños, and Pacific Oscillations. They conducted principal component and maximum covariance analyses and found correlations of stagnant air conditions over China to Arctic sea ice – which reached a record low in the fall of 2012 – and snowfall in the upper latitudes of Siberia, which had reached a record high earlier in the winter. They then used atmospheric model simulations to study how those factors change large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and pollution ventilation over eastern China.
“The reductions in sea ice and increase in snowfall have the effect of damping the climatological pressure ridge structure over China,” Wang said. “That flattens the temperature and pressure gradients and moves the East Asian Winter Monsoon to the east, decreasing wind speeds and creating an atmospheric circulation that makes the air in China more stagnant.”
The results of the model were consistent with observations that Korea and Japan had been unusually cold that winter, while eastern China had been unusually warm – both suggesting that the cold center had moved.
The winter of 2017 saw the same factors, with low levels of Arctic sea ice in September 2016, high snowfall – and severe haze. Wang says those factors are likely to continue as the global climate change disrupts the normal structure of the atmosphere.
“Despite the efforts to reduce emissions, we think that haze will probably continue for the future,” he said. “This is partly climate-driven now, so it probably won’t get much better in the winter. Emissions are no longer the only driver of these conditions.”
Wang hopes to continue the study using new data from China’s air quality monitoring network. The impact of global climate change, he said, may be unique to China because of its geography and sensitivity to changes in atmospheric circulation structure. Though the problem is now manifested in air pollution, he said the results of the study should encourage the nation to continue addressing climate change.
“The very rapid change in polar warming is really having a large impact on China,” he said. “That gives China an incentive to not only follow through on air pollutant emission reductions, and also to look at the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our research shows that cutting greenhouse gases would help with the winter haze problem.”
###
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Atmospheric Chemistry Program and the U.S. EPA Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Program through grant RD-83520401. It has not been subjected to any EPA review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the EPA, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring agencies.
CITATION: Yufei Zou, Yuhang Wang, Yuzhong Zhang, Ja-Ho Koo, “Arctic sea ice, Eurasia snow, and extreme winter haze in China,” (Science Advances, 2017).
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“Emissions are no longer the only driver of these conditions.” –> emissions were never the only driver of air pollution in these “interconnected basins surrounded by mountain ranges to the west and the ocean to the east, a mirror image of the polluted Southern California. ” Geography and a propensity to inversion layers are the primary cause of trapping emissions in the valleys.
Just like Los Angeles has done over a twenty year period, reducing emissions to a low enough level will improve their situation.
Hoping to cure pollution problems in Beijing by focusing on global climate change is fruit-cakery.
I smell a future demand that the West de-industrialize even faster so China’s air quality can improve.
Hawkins ==> I grew up in LA in the 50s and 60s — and boy did we have smog then, eye-stinging, lung choking smog — and there were a lot fewer cars then. The efforts to reduce automobile exhaust pollution greatly improved things — but the inversion layer still forms and keeps some smog around when ythe lid is clapped down too long.
China has horrid air pollution because it pollutes the air –m not because the climate is changing.
The majority of bad air in Beijing comes from Hebei, the province that surrounds it. The Feds in Beijing have given Hebei 2 years to reduce their PM2.5 average 25%, starting early last year.
The problem in China is to distinguish bewteen the effects of their rapid industriaisation and the dust that’s akways blown of the Takla Makan.
Sort out that and then we can discuss changes in the climate.
Yes, MC! At last someone who knows the elephant in the room.
M C
A lot of the PM2.5 (actually PM0.1-PM 1.0 if you look closely) is cause by the inefficiency of the combustion of domestic coal-fired water heating and cooking equipment. This is something that is very easy to fix, and that is happening. The early solution implemented was to convert the fuel to semi-coked briquettes of different sizes and subsidise it, pls ban raw coal.
The misdirection about this is that coal is not in itself ‘smoky’. The devices used to burn it are. With the replacement of the old-fashioned burners with modern ones, the smoke reduction is over 99%. This punts a hole through the ‘smoky fuels’ concept, something still taught in European universities, to my surprise.
The very best available products clean the air as they burn coal, producing nothing at all except CO2, water vapour and SO2 according to the level in the coal (presuming it has not been treated).
The reason the haze persists is because no one obeys the regulations. Pollution is only being reduced on paper. Everyone says they have reduced but in fact they only use pollution controls when the inspectors are looking.
We were in Beijing spring the asean conference. Clear blue skies because the government ordered all the factories closed. The joke in China was that this shade of blue was called asean blue.
Isn’t this more appropriate for state run media content?
When Beijing hosted the 2008 summer olympics, the skies were amazingly clear and blue. Why? It wasn’t climate change. They shut down the factories for two weeks. It would be nice if these “scientists” would apply simple tests to check if their theories hold easily observable scrutiny instead of being, well, hot air.
I am in Beijing a lot at different times of the year. There are lots of clear air days. There is also a lot of early morning fog that looks like smog. The same as many other cities. The max PM numbers these days are FAR better than many other cites. Beijing is a whipping boy for media people who don’t want to bother to leave town. Food is too good. Or laziness.
There is lots of pollution in China, but air pollution in Beijing is somehow the go-to telephoto shot when they media want to shut down the power generation system.
So if the model is reliable, did they publish a firm prediction of winter weather around the world for the next 5 years? You know, something both useful and that can be scientifically confirmed? Create a model, predict, check results within a meaningful error boundary – you know, science.
+1
The Londontown Clothing Company was founded in 1923.
In 1938, and known as “London Fog”, the Company made waterproof coats for the U. S. Navy.
Okay, that isn’t the sort of fog to be explained. Try this one:
The Great Smog of 1952
Clean air and not coincidental nuclear advocate Senator Lamar Alexander’s reaction to Climategate “more research” There’s gold in them there grants. Expanding the scope of knowledge is good. Even when what we learn is that we are wasting our money. In the US we are attempting to apply lessons learned. Its causing alot of anxiety.
Hit and run science is the new norm.
China should rely exclusively on wind and solar, effective immediately.
We used to blow smoke up people’s arses to revive them from drowning. We have come a long way in science…
Now we blow it in their ears.
Now we have another reason Judith Curry retired from Geogia Tech. So as not to be embarssed by such drivel.
Cosmic rays.
There are far more likely causes of the smog.
The only ‘climate’ related one would increased industrialization to feed the false fear of CO2 driven climate change by providing solar cells and rare earth magnets for hybrid/electric cars and windmills.
The most likely cause is a rapid increase in truck and automobile traffic. There were no emission standards in China for trucks and autos until the 90’s, so there are still a lot of old engines without pollution controls in use.
Yep. The Great Smog of London, which claimed some 12,000 lives in 1952, was caused by a period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions. The Clean Air Act of 1956 had nothing to do with the cleanup, ’cause it was climate wut dun it.
In this malleable world where I may or may not be a male, depending on how I feel, all things may or may not be.
To may, or not to may, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous forecasts,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of data,
And by opposing end them: to it die, to be funded
No more; and by mass firings, to say we end
the make-believe, and the thousand human shocks
that weather was said heir to?
In China they burn brown coal in the numerous power plants, which also do not have baghouse filters for the stacks, and they have denuded millions of acres of land by clearcutting for firewood. Hence, they have a lot of particulate matter in the air: SO2, soot, and dust. They need the electricity, but they also need filtration for the coal power plants, no more brown coal burning, and plant some trees.
China is a different sort of place. Almost no landscaping, construction debris is still there 30 years after the building is finished, and lots and lots of areas have no wildlife whatsoever, no squirrels, no birds, no butterflies. Environmentally an ongoing disaster, just recently attempts to clean up parts of it have begun. Also incredibly bad and dangerous traffic, lots of wicked accidents, and fools trying to cross superhighways on foot. Strange…
Oh and I forgot, a few million Diesel trucks and buses with no filters, belching huge clouds of black soot laden with Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon carcinogens…
M Moon
50% of the PM 2.5 in the air of Beijing is from the farms surround the city. That is from measurements, not speculation.
Ridiculous. This is the same type of winter pollution that St. Louis, Pittsburgh and London used to have. It was largely cleaned up by the US cities before the EPA was founded.
So, if I understand correctly, they’re saying that it’s not the fault of pollution that the skies of China are polluted, it’s the fault of the wind not blowing it out to sea? Is this their way to get around having to increase pollution controls to improve the actual environment?
So they are saying that it is our fault that there isn’t more wind to blow the pollution away. I guess we should (do what?) so that the wind increases, blowing the pollution… where? Here? No thanks.
Looks like Dr. Curry got out of there just in time. Tune in next year for: “Scientists at GA Tech link Chinese Air Pollution to Changes in Phlogiston Circulation and Climate Induced Leech Shortage”
China’s City pollution is closely related to very rapidly increasing numbers of cars and diesel trucks and buses on the roads, not some imagined changes in Climate caused or not caused by CO2. But there’s no funding from that for CAGW.
ntesdorf
“…very rapidly increasing numbers of cars…”
No it’s not. It is related to the placing of coal on top of existing fires. This practise has to die. It is not how to burn coal, it is how to burn wood. Domestic fires are a major source of all air pollution in Asia. As technologies are replaced, this practice will also disappear. Anyone who wants to see how this is done properly should come to the Stove expo in Langfang 17 April where new, vastly cleaner combustion technologies are on display (annually).
Vehicles are become a major portion of a far smaller total load. They are not the cause of an increase because the total is decreasing, not increasing.
I seem to recall that there was a theory/hypothesis that China’s pollution was the CAUSE of arctic ice loss. For example:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/21/soot-and-the-arctic-ice-%E2%80%93-a-win-win-policy-based-on-chinese-coal-fired-power-plants%E2%80%9D/
Is this another chicken and egg moment?
The squawk of Chicken Little arising from the egg of opportunity?
I think so.
They also used to said the CO2 from power stations was causing warming and when it didn’t warm, they blamed the sulphates from the same combustion for causing a ‘masking cooling effect’. The warning came in to the effect that cleaning up the combustion would cause the CO2 effect to appear as if by magic.
Don’t hold your breath.
Dose of reality:
Taiyuan was, 15 years ago, the second most polluted city in China, and that is saying something. Now it is far better. Showing one photo from some day in December (there are more domestic stove ignitions in early winter than mid-winter because it is not all that cold) instead of a chart of daily PM levels per 3 hrs or 30 minutes meaning nothing.
The US embassy has a PM monitor in Beijing, but that is not showing ‘worse’ conditions, it is getting better and better. This winter had abnormally low winds. There is no proof that it is ‘linked to global warming’ in a country without any meaningful change in a couple of decades. The ‘sea ice’ ‘snowfall’ claim requires one to push the BS Button. What tripe.
Let’s take another city in the region: Ulaanbaatar where there are long term measurements and which are tweeted every 30 minutes http://www.UB_AIR.com. Since 2011 the air pollution (PM2.5) has dropped 65% to the level reached in 2015. It then improved a little to last winter, and this winter currently finishing, it is worse than the year before. The reason for that are three: the increasing number of low pressure boilers (hydronic heater) being installed in settled people’s housing, the sale of highly improved coal stoves to people living out side the city, and abnormally low winds, as happens from time to time.
I note there is no mention of the abnormally low temperatures over northern Asia this October-November – twenty degrees C below normal! No doubt that too was caused by global warming and a lack of sea ice.
The air in Beijing is far better than it was. I was there a few days ago and enjoyed a string of clear sunny days. Picking Taiyuan City as an example of anything other than what a coal mining district looks like is a lie of convenience. They can’t dare show cotemporary Beijing because the air is so clean. There is an on-going Hebei Clean Air Project (Hebei surrounds Beijing and is responsible for most of Beijing’s pollution) with 51 measures being taken to improve their air (which drifts into Beijing) including replacing boilers, removing old vehicles, putting in electric buses, changing production technologies and replacing 800,000 farmer’s heating stoves with models at least 60% cleaner than the not-all-that-bad baseline heaters. Most are >90% cleaner. These measures ($500m) indicate serious action on improving the entire environment.
Belly-aching about Beijing air is so ‘yesterday’. Living in 300 micrograms of PM2.5/m^3 gives the same exposure as smoking 1/5th of a cigarette per day. Testing by Dr Talent of the COPD office in Kyrgyzstan a few weeks ago measured smoke exposures indoors as high as 6000, or the equivalent exposure of smoking 4 cigarettes a day (for adults breathing 30 cu m a day).
As CAGW and CFC’s go dark, the new alarum is ‘health’ and PM2.5, Global Burden of Disease GBD and Burden of Disease BoD modeling with numbers as fantastical and as ‘well grounded’ as mainstream ‘climate science’.
The reason pollution remains near the ground in winter is linked to high pressure anticyclones. Every event of pollution in Europe this winter was related to such circumstances. A Monsoon is when trades are crossing the geographical equator, so in boreal winter there is no chance to have a “monsoon” over northern hemisphere, it is a “contresens”.
So stronger anticyclones pushing at their edges more moist air back to the pole, hence more snow up there is what to expect in a cooling environment. So indeed this changing climate has been on since the climatic shift of the 1970s.
Those modeling artists have no clue of how weather forms.