{"id":3768,"date":"2016-09-09T14:26:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T06:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/?p=3768"},"modified":"2020-07-15T11:56:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T03:56:38","slug":"us-embassy-beijing-reads-aqi-of-0-are-the-summer-skies-always-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/us-embassy-beijing-reads-aqi-of-0-are-the-summer-skies-always-clear\/","title":{"rendered":"US Embassy Beijing Reads AQI of 0! Are the Summer Skies Always Clear?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Map of today’s pollution levels across China –\u00a09th September 2016.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Source\uff1ahttp:\/\/aqicn.org<\/p>\n

What a glorious day in Beijing! Right now, the US Embassy in Beijing is giving a PM2.5 value of 0. Is summer normally this good? And what’s the pollution like in other parts of China right now? (Short answer: not good! Long answer: read on!)<\/p>\n


\nUS Embassy Beijing’s Twitter account<\/p>\n

A few months back we posted our analysis<\/a> on the summer\/winter variation in air pollution in Beijing. Using the US Embassy\u2019s data for four more cities we\u2019re able to paint a wider picture of the difference in summer and winter pollution levels across major cities in China.<\/p>\n

This time around we\u2019ve analyzed the US Embassy’s data for Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shenyang. Using data from the past 7 years we have calculated each city\u2019s pollution on a monthly and seasonal basis.<\/p>\n

The result? Our analysis across these four cities confirmed the popular theory that summer air is better than winter air; PM2.5 levels were on average 29% better in the summer across all cities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that during the winter months, air pollutants which would often disperse away from city centers remain locally confined due to inversion. Inversion is an atmospheric condition in which cold air is trapped beneath a layer of warm air close to the earth\u2019s surface. Summer heat prevents this inversion.<\/p>\n

Although summer pollution is \u201cbetter\u201d than winter, it\u2019s doesn\u2019t mean these levels are satisfactory or safe by WHO standards. The summer average across the Chinese cities we tested (60\u00b5g\/m3<\/sup>) still exceeded the WHO yearly limit (10\u00b5g\/m3<\/sup>) by 600%.<\/p>\n

Of all the cities, the lowest summer pollution levels were seen in Shanghai and Guangzhou (49\u00b5g\/m3<\/sup>, five times the WHO limit). The worst summer pollution levels (excluding Beijing) were seen in Chengdu. In fact, Chengdu\u2019s winter average pollution levels are even worse than Beijing\u2019s!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pollution levels on a monthly basis:<\/p>\n

We also plotted the average monthly pollution levels for all the cities with US Embassy data, these graphs can give a good idea of which cities have the worst pollution levels, and which months are the worst overall.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The above graphs show a clear annual trend in PM2.5 across each of the cities: pollution levels rise in \u201cwinter\u201d months (October-March) and dip in\u201csummer\u201d months (April-September). July and August look to be the best months across most cities, although Beijing has a peculiar peak in air pollution levels in July \u2013 most likely due to the lack of wind to blow the pollution away. In fact, Beijing\u2019s yearly variation in pollution is the smallest of all cities \u2013 it remains at a consistent average concentration above 80\u00b5g\/m3.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

December and January are consistently the worst months for pollution, which is most likely due to the burning more fossil fuels during winter for heating.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can find our 200RMB & 470RMB air purifiers on\u00a0Taobao<\/a>\u00a0and on our\u00a0PayPal store<\/a>. You can learn more about our purifiers and what masks we recommend by coming to one of our workshops<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Map of today’s pollution levels across China –\u00a09th September 2016. Source\uff1ahttp:\/\/aqicn.org What a glorious day in Beijing! Right now, the US Embassy in Beijing is giving a PM2.5 value of 0. Is summer normally this good? And what’s the pollution like in other parts of China right now? (Short answer: … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,257,261],"tags":[278,178,174,195],"class_list":["post-3768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-pm2-5","category-weather","tag-air-quality","tag-summer","tag-us-embassy","tag-weather","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3768"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11488,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions\/11488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}