China Falls Short on Olympic Cleanup

Typography
When most people think about the Olympic Games, they envision blazing torches, gold medals, and triumphant athletes. But a handful of scientists saw the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find out what happens when a major industrial city suddenly cuts back on air pollution. The

When most people think about the Olympic Games, they envision blazing torches, gold medals, and triumphant athletes. But a handful of scientists saw the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find out what happens when a major industrial city suddenly cuts back on air pollution. The first analysis of this "experiment" concludes that China's efforts produced only a slight improvement in Beijing's air quality.

Beijing sits in a soupy haze of pollution from nearby factories, coal-fired power plants, and traffic that increases dramatically by the day, making the city one of the most air polluted in the world. China spent billions of dollars trying to control emissions that could hinder athlete's performances on game day. From 20 July to 20 September 2008, the Chinese government temporarily closed factories and regulated the number of cars on the road in Beijing and in nearby areas, all with the hopes of curbing aerosols--fine particles suspended in the atmosphere. China tried a similar traffic strategy in 2006 during a 3-day political summit and achieved 40% to 60% reductions in aerosol concentrations, according to one study. But this study covered only a short period and concentrated on aerosols at ground level, not throughout the larger atmosphere. For the 2008 Olympics, Chinese officials called for reductions of 60% to 70% in automobile emissions and up to 30% in industrial emissions.

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To find out how successful they were, atmospheric scientist Jan Cermak of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and a colleague used satellite data to measure the overall amount of particulates hanging over Beijing from 1 August through 19 September for each year from 2002 through 2008. This technique allowed them to analyze aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere from top to bottom but didn't allow them to decipher exactly where they were in that space. But just monitoring aerosols isn't enough, because weather also affects air pollution's severity--a rainy day can flush pollutants from the air, whereas a windy day can bring in pollutants from far-off industrial areas or carry them out of the city. So the researchers also collected data on wind speed and direction, rainfall, and relative humidity. They then applied these relationships to predict what air pollution would have been in 2008 without any emission controls.

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