East China haze on NASA - Beijing bike rental
December has not been a good month for Beijing’s air quality; NASA offers this satellite image taken on 17 Dec, where we see a giant cloud of haze covering the East China plains (thanks to Danwei for the link). Beijing’s API was only 78 that day, indeed a ‘Clear Sky Day’! According to SEPA data, the 4 near cities of Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Qinhuangdao, Taiyuan, all had APIs higher than Beijing on that day, which is quite unusual, so i really don’t know what to think about the Beijing numbers anymore.. (also see my page local vs regional)
In the above graph we see that we only got 12 ‘Clear Sky Days’ out of 20 so far this month, which is slightly below the target of 67% (245 days per year). The average API for these 20 days is 101, which corresponds to a PM10 concentration of 150 microgram/m3 which is by all standard really really bad. In fact, in Belgium, my native country, these last few days there are special temporary measures to reduce the maximum highway speed from 120km/hr to 90km/hr because the authorities expect increased levels of fine dust (PM10), above 70 microgram/m3 which is alarming in Europe, but only half of what we have here on average!
This picture comes from Belgium’s monitoring authority IRCEL; it shows the alarming situation (to European standards) that about half of the country (orange-red area) has a PM10 higher than 70 micrograms/m3 (which corresponds to an API of 60), and that our average level in Beijing of 150 micrograms/m3 (API 100) is really far into the red, hardly reached in Belgium on the worst days!
Still a long way to go for Beijing, but yesterday i was extremely happy to see that at last a bike rental network is expanding throughout the city with more than 50 rental points, and flexible terms. The target is to have 50,000 rental bikes out there for the Olympics.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:45 am
As in Belgium, one should keep in mind that not traffic is the most important cause of fine dust. It is also doubtful that driving slower really influences the level of fine dust on that particular day. As a matter of fact I suspect a secondary agenda in Belgium, from traffic safety lobbying, to prepare the people for stricter speed limits on highways independent from air pollution.
Also it should be mentioned that in Belgium at least, most of the fine dust in traffic is caused by diesel engines, a choice of the public under influence of tax laws, making diesel fuel cheaper than gasoline. Fine dust from traffic is therefore in Belgium partially a government induced problem.