The Spring Festival Effect on air quality in the megacities of China:
View from space
Abstract
The Spring Festival is the most important holiday in China, human
activity and population mobility may contribute greatly to air quality,
especially in the megacities. According to the satellite-based
tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO) column and ground-based observational
concentration of NO in the megacities from 2013 to 2018 around the
Spring Festival, we found that NO concentration decreases obviously
during the Spring Festival in China, particularly in the megacities. The
tropospheric NO columns density around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region
decreases about 40% than the period before the festival, that in
Beijing and Tianjin decreases by 41.6% and 44.5% respectively.
Similarly, the other two municipal cities Shanghai and Chongqing
decrease by 43.2% and 31.8% in the urban. Consistently, the
ground-based NO concentration in the four megacities decrease by 18.9%
~ 38.8%. Besides, the ground-based NO concentration
also decreases by above 20% during the Spring Festival vacation in the
other eight megacities in China.