Benefits of Recent Clean Air Actions in China on Global Air Quality and Climate Change
- 1Duke University, Nicholas School of the Environment, Durham, United States of America (yuqiang.zhang@duke.edu)
- 2John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
- 3Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
- 4Laboratoire des Sciences du Climate et de l'Environnement LSCE, Batiment 706, Pte 25, Orme de Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- 5State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
- 6School of Earth and Space, Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China
- 7State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control & Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Significant emission reductions have been observed in China recently, especially after the the ‘Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan’ in 2013. Major air pollutants, such as NOx, CO, SO2, are found to reach their peak in 2012 or 2013. Few studies attempted to investigate how the recent emission reductions in China will affect global air quality and climate change. Here, by using global climate-chemistry models and health impact functions, we investigate how the contrasting emission changes in China from 2010 to 2017 will affect global air quality, mortality burden and climate change. We calculate that compared with the year 2010, 4800 deaths were avoided due to ozone reductions in 2017 globally, while 65% of the avoided deaths happen in China, and the other 35% worldwide. In 2017, 109,000 deaths were avoided due to PM2.5 reductions, while 92% of the avoided deaths happen in China, and the other 8% worldwide. We also find that the cooling effect from the emission reductions of SO2 in China has been compensated by the warming effect from the emission reductions of black carbon at the same time in China, which is the opposite trend as found in the developed countries in previous decades.
How to cite: Zhang, Y., Shindell, D., Seltzer, K., Shen, L., Zhang, Q., Zheng, B., Xing, J., Jiang, Z., and Zhang, L.: Benefits of Recent Clean Air Actions in China on Global Air Quality and Climate Change, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-529, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-529, 2019
