BeijingAirblog.com

I found it quite ironic that the Deputy Director of BJEPB urged the public ‘to analyze the data scientifically’ instead of drawing conclusions from the haze. So let’s look for the scientists.

The European Space Agency (ESA) proudly announced on 22 July 2008 that it:

‘installed a High Resolution Air Quality Forecasting System at the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) that allows Chinese authorities to monitor the effect these cuts have on street level air quality…Three-day forecasts are posted daily and are accessible on the Beijing Air Quality website www.beijingairquality.cn. The forecasts are high-resolution pollution contour maps that predict levels of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particles and sulphur dioxide for each of Beijing’s eight districts. Users can choose to view maps of each pollutant separately or to view the total health index with all pollutants combined.’

Unfortunately this site www.beijingairquality.cn is only accessible by username/password; that’s how far the transparancy goes. Without access to this data, it is difficult ‘to analyze them scientifically’.

Fortunately there is another project, supported by the EU, which groups various European research institutes: Air Quality Monitoring and Forecasting In China (AMFIC). These scientists have a model of the emission sources, and combined with weather data, they make predictions for the next 3 days. For example in this forecast of PM10 for Sunday 3 August, you can see that it will get quite bad, over 200 micrograms/m3, not surprising with no rain forecasted on Sat-Sun and temperatures of 33-34 degrees C. They also provide an archive, and i have animated the PM10 around Beijing since 18 July until 4 Aug - you can see that we are heading for some ugly days again, if this model is correct.

And this cartoon by my good friend Nick (click to enlarge)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under olympics, efforts to control. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.