August 6, 2008
Beijing Olympics: Getting ready
The Olympic Games start this Friday on an auspicious date (08/08/08) and the analysis of air pollution in Beijing continues. Deborah Seligsohn from the World Resources Institute prepared a recent article on the sources of air pollution called
Beijing's Air Pollution: It Isn't The Cars. She points out what we've noticed: air pollution in China is a regional problem from multiple sources, particularly coal fired plants and other industry.
I am actually writing this on the evening of 7 August Malaysian time so the Games start in less than 24 hours. However, broadcast in the U.S. will likely be delayed 12 or so hours and most of the data and images available right now are from 6 August. So, I'll backdate this a bit and let's look at the suite of air quality data visible from satellites about two days before Opening Ceremonies.
Starting with the MODIS Terra true color image, Beijing and surrounding areas are partly to mostly cloudy. Where there are no clouds, a layer of haze can still be seen throughout the region. It seems to be reduced from previous days, but it is not insignificant.
OMI can give us an indication of some of the pollutant types. On the left is the tropospheric NO2, which is significantly higher in the urban areas, including Shanghai to the southeast as well as across much of Korea and parts of Japan. On the right is SO2 concentrations. As mentioned in the above article as well as a summary from Dot Earth (the New York Times Blog), SO2 levels are very high in the industrial areas of China, particularly to the west and south of Beijing, due to coal combustian. Even with the strict air pollution controls right now, hot spots are still visible.
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We do not have an aerosol optical depth image for August 6, but there is one for August 7. I'll post that later and do an update tomorrow.
Posted by Jill Engel-Cox at August 6, 2008 11:59 PM