Seminar

Abstract

Mega-cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong are located in three large city clusters in China, the Northern China Plain, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta (PRD). Like the other coastal regions in China, these mega-cities have been experiencing fast economic development and consequently serious environmental pollution.

After decades long efforts to control air pollution, both the scientific communities and government have realized that in order to control air pollution in megacities, regional efforts are needed. Field campaigns covering the regions like PRD and Northern China Plain are critical to understand the chemical and physical processes leading to the formation of regional scale air pollution.

In 2004 and 2006, an international collaborate project PRIDE-PRD organized fields campaigns in the summer and fall in PRD to study the regional air pollution formation processes in this region.

For the 2008 Olympics, air pollution in Beijing was a serious concern. In order to formulate air pollution control strategies for the 2008 Olympics, an international collaborative project, CAREBEIJING, conducted field campaigns in Beijing and surrounding regions in the summers of 2006, 2007, and 2008.

With the efforts of more than 200 scientists and students from 21 research institutes, PRIDE-PRD and CAREBEIJING were conducted with great success. Summary of the analysis results of the PRD and Beijing Campaigns will be presented, and future research plan will be discussed.