Cleaner air in the Yangtze Delta depends on cross-border collaboration
The Yangtze River Delta Region Air Quality Forecast Center is located at Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center.
Polluted air is no respecter of boundaries. Shanghai has made great strides in cleaning up the city’s air, but the effort needs a broader scope to be truly effective.
So, today, Shanghai sits at the center of an effort to tackle air quality in the Yangtze River Delta region. That involves a cooperative effort with four provinces and 41 cities that border the great river on its final journey to the East China Sea.
It’s part of a much broader initiative to more closely bind the economies, transport, industry and cultures of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi, which together comprise the Yangtze River Delta region.
The Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center, which houses the regional Air Quality Forecast Center, has been providing air quality-related services to the region since 2014.
Since the end of 2018, a seven-day air quality forecast has replaced the previous five-day forecast, thanks to a system upgrade and technical support from the Shanghai Supercomputer Center.
“An early forecast helps the region better prepare its emergency plans for serious air pollution,” said Wang Qian, vice director of the center’s atmospheric environment monitoring office.
Apart from upgraded hardware and software in the forecast system, an “historical case base” has been established for matching algorithms during air quality analysis. That enhances the accuracy of the forecasts.
According to Wang, information-sharing among the cities and provinces of the Yangtze River Delta region is the key to air quality forecast work.
Data from hundreds of air quality-monitoring stations in Shanghai and the four provinces are collected and subjected to model analysis at the Shanghai forecast center. Teleconferences are held with experts of the provinces and cities before a seven-day air quality forecast is produced.
“We hold video conferences every week from November to March – a season when air pollution occurs more frequently,” said Wang. “When it comes to large-scale activities or important conferences, like the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, the video conferences are held on a daily base to provide more accurate and divided-period forecasts.”
The accuracy of air quality forecasts for Shanghai has reached 84 percent. However, for the delta region as a whole, it’s slightly over 60 percent.
“We will continue to improve our work and deepen cooperation among neighboring provinces,” Wang said, referring to more detailed air quality data, as well as information on major pollution sources in each location.
Air quality-monitoring equipments on the roof of Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center
Data-sharing is crucial not only in forecasting, but also in emergency planning and in the fight against air pollution.
Shanghai has led the way in the past five years, reducing the average density of major air pollutant PM2.5 particles to 36 micrograms per cubic meter in 2018 from 62 in 2013.
To bring the index further down requires more effort and teamwork from delta provinces.
“Battling generated pollutants, including ozone and those generated from volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, has become our next task,” said Wang Hongli, vice director of the Atmospheric Environment Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences.
“The pollutants may be detected in Shanghai, but their origins might be in neighboring provinces, or vice versa,” she said.
The academy has been collecting information on pollution sources, major pollutants and major pollution periods from all the cities in the delta region and lending its expertise to local authorities.
“We provide very detailed assistance to some cities, like how to identify and manage heavy-polluting vehicles,” said Wang Hongli. “Our analysis shows that moving polluting sources, including cars and ships, are major contributors to regional air pollution. Management of these sources requires the joint effort of all cities and provinces in the region.”
Cooperation across the delta region is producing results.
For example, Shanghai’s Qingpu District is working hand-in-hand with the cities of Jiashan and Wujiang in neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces to improve water environmental protection work, said the district’s Bureau of Ecology and Environment.
Qingpu, Wujiang and Jiashan are connected by the Taipu River, one of Shanghai’s sources of drinking water. Located downstream on the river, Qingpu has every reason to want to keep the Taipu clean.
The district and two cities are planning to establish a platform where real-time data related to air and water quality can be shared. The three jurisdictions also will assess the feasibility of new construction projects to prevent possible pollution they might create.
"We aim to set a good example for other regions in the Yangtze River Delta region," said Shen Lindi from the bureau. “The three parties are working on a long-term mechanism to share monitoring data and early warnings of environmental hazards.”
Police, transport and environment authorities in the three jurisdictions have held joint patrols to crack down on illegal factories that cause pollution in the area.
One of the major pollutants the trio have been monitoring closely is antimony, a chemical element widely used by textile factories as a fire retardant. Wujiang is famous for its textile industry, and waste water discharged by the factories there may sometimes contain antimony.
“Once the density of antimony reaches 5 micrograms per milliliter, Wujiang will send an alarm to us and halt production,” said Wang Feng, chief of the Qingpu environmental monitoring station.
