Same old smog after lucky February
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008Over the last 3 months it has been tempting to think that the air quality in Beijing was actually improving since the start of the year, but the last weeks have been as bad as we are used to. The graph below shows the daily API values in blue, with a black trend line of 10-day moving average, which stays below the 100 (yearly average) for roughly the first 10 weeks of 2008. 71 so-called ‘blue sky days’ out of 98; that is 72% which is a bit higher than the 67% of last year. A stroke of good luck, plus the effect of less industrial activity around Lunar New Year? On 18 March the first sand storm hit Beijing, and the API went up to 304.
You can see in this graph that February was an exceptionally good month, with an average API of only 73, well below the yearly average of 100. This article reports that 10 key polluting factories in Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin have already been closed to improve the air quality ahead of the Olympic games, and the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia are also being involved in the efforts.
Before we get to optimistic, let’s remember the monitoring station shift described on this blog before, which will make it easier to get lower API values without actually getting better air quality. BOCOG environmental director responded to this story with the statement that the stations ‘were not moved’, but as we have demonstrated, the list of 27 stations simply has changed. In fact it is not so complicated for anyone who wishes to see for themselves; an effort this person obviously did not make. According to China Daily, 66% of Beijingers recently polled about the air quality, think it has improved. Probably the poll took place in February, a stroke of luck.