Tales of Five Chinese Cities: PM2.5 Data Reliability and Compatibility in Air Quality Assessment

• Activity Number: 244
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2016 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Xuan Liang* and Shuo Li and Shuyi Zhang and Hui Huang and Song Xi Chen
• Companies: Peking University and Peking University and Peking University and Peking University and Peking University/Iowa State University
• Keywords: Air-Quality Assessment ; Data Quality ; Heating Effect ; Meteorological Confounding ; PM2.5 ; Statistical Modeling

Abstract

We investigate PM2.5 data reliability in five major Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang by cross-validating data from US diplomatic posts and the nearby Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) sites based on data from January 2013. The investigation focuses on the compatibility in air-quality assessment derived from the two data sources. It consists of studying on (i) the duration statistics in different states of the PM2.5 concentration; (ii) the air-quality assessment for each city and (iii) the winter-heating effects in Beijing and Shenyang. We also provide much needed air-quality assessments on the severity and trends of the fine particulate matter pollution in the five cities.