Beijing's Air Is Going to Get Worse Thanks to Global Warming

By Justine Lopez

Lately, Beijing has been making all sorts of efforts to clean up its air. The city has formed an environmental police squad, moved to replace all taxis with green vehicles and just yesterday the last large-scale coal-fired power plant in the city was shut down.

But it turns out this might not be enough.

According to a study published last week by Nature Climate Change, research shows that global warming might cause longer and more extreme bouts of pollution in the capital in the future.

Weather conditions created by global warming are favorable to heavy bouts of pollution – anything above an AQI of 150 micrograms per cubic meter – in Beijing.

In the study, Chinese researchers used 15 climate models and compared Beijing’s air during two 33-year periods. They concluded that there was a 10 percent increase in “severe haze events” from 1982 to 2015 compared to the years 1948 to 1981. Researchers now posit this rise is directly correlated to global warming. If global warming continues, this trend is likely to occur in the future and heavy bouts of smog will be more frequent and last longer in Beijing.

According to the study, climate change impacts Beijing’s pollution levels in a variety of ways. For example, weak East Asian winter monsoons can impact smog in Beijing. This winter monsoon usually functions to dissipate smog in Northern China. But in 2013, the monsoon turned east – toward Japan and Korea – and missed Beijing. The result was heavier pollution in the capital. Researchers now believe that this was a result of the diminishing levels of Arctic sea ice, which reached an all-time low in 2012.

The study concluded that in the second half of the century heavy smog would occur 50 percent more often and linger for twice as long.

It's a scary thought.

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