The air quality of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings of 2014 were held from November 7-12. In order to guarantee the good air quality of Beijing, the Chinese government has taken the most stringent emission reduction measures to date. This study analyzed and compared the air quality of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) regions just before and after APEC meetings. The observations show that the APEC emission reduction measures have effectively improved the air quality of BTH, especially Beijing. Compared with normal emission period (NEP), the PM2.5, PM10, O-3, SO2, NO2 and CO concentrations of Beijing during emission reduction periods were reduced by about 58%, 49%, 9%, 34%, 23%, and 4%. The air quality in Tianjin and Hebei were improved significantly, but the rises were smaller than ones in Beijing. During the APEC meetings, due to the weak southerly wind the contribution of backward trajectories from the neighboring air pollution areas of Beijing was less than 10%. The stringent emission reduction measures and favorable weather conditions ensured the good air qualities during the APEC meetings. Copyright (c) 2015 Turkish National Committee for Air Pollution Research and Control. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.