Air Quality Perturbations Over Rural Mountain Regions by Large-Scale Urbanization in China

The increased large-scale atmospheric pollution resulted from rapid industrialization and urbanization in China is a matter of concern to atmospheric scientists and policy makers at both domestic and international levels. Dispersion and transport of these air pollutants cause serious air quality degradation on a local scale. Meanwhile, by long-range transport, the effect of these air pollutants is observed on a regional and even intercontinental scale. From 2003, we have started program to monitor the large-scale atmospheric composition changes by establishing four surface ozone observatories at different rural mountain regions in China, namely Mt. Tai, (36 15N, 117 06E, 1538 m above sea level) in Shandon Province, eastern China, Mt. Huang (30 08N, 118 09E, 1841 m asl) in Anhui Province, southeastern China, Mt. Hua (34 28N, 110 04E, 2065 m asl) in Shaanxi Province, central eastern China, and Tianchi Lake (43 54N 88 07E, 1925 m asl) in Tianshan mountains, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, western China. In addition, at some of these observatories carbon monoxide and black carbon measurements are also available. Our results show that the influences from large-scale urbanization in China are clearly observed at all of these rural mountain sites. On a seasonal basis, ozone variations are controlled by air mass climatology and seasonal photochemical activities but on a temporal basis, the frequently observed high mixing ratios and large fluctuation of ozone, carbon monoxide and black carbon indicate the strong nhancements by anthropogenic emission from industrialization and urbanization. Especially at Mt. Tai during early-summer, the episodic pollution events have been observed for four consecutive years. In this presentation, data analysis of ozone, carbon monoxide and black carbon at these mountain sites have been carried out. Categorization and identification of the pollution sources have been made. The characteristics of these air pollutants and their distribution which are associated with different sources will be discussed.