Estimation of background concentration of PM in Beijing using a statistical integrated approach

Özet

The high concentrations of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) air pollutants in China are of great concern topublic health. To develop efficient and effective environment control policies, an understanding of PM backgroundconcentrations is therefore essential. In this study, we estimated background concentrations of PM10 andPM2.5 in Beijing from January to December 2016, using an integrated approach that involved meteorologicalfiltering, backward trajectory modelling, spectral analysis and a Kolmogorov–Zurbenko (KZ) filter. The estimatedannual average background concentration of PM10 was 47 μg/m3 (ranging from 37 to 71 μg/m3), whilePM2.5 averaged 25 μg/m3 (ranging from 18 to 37 μg/m3). The contribution of background pollution to theambient concentration of PM was 37–68% for PM10 and 21–54% for PM2.5, which is comparable to other studies.The estimated background concentrations from this study were assessed using the Community Multi-scale AirQuality results published by Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. Our method has great potentialfor estimating PM pollutants and could also be applied to other pollutants.