Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

Haze is a serious issue in China with increasing concerns, and understanding the factors driving decadal-scale variations in haze occurrence is relevant for government policymaking. Using a comprehensive observational haze dataset, we demonstrate notable decadal fluctuations in the number of haze da...

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Main Authors:	Zhao, Sen, Li, Jianping, Sun, Cheng
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4901280/

id	pubmed-4901280
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-49012802016-06-13 Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation Zhao, Sen Li, Jianping Sun, Cheng Article Haze is a serious issue in China with increasing concerns, and understanding the factors driving decadal-scale variations in haze occurrence is relevant for government policymaking. Using a comprehensive observational haze dataset, we demonstrate notable decadal fluctuations in the number of haze days (HD) during winter in central eastern China, showing a decline since the mid-1980s. The leading mode of the wintertime HD features an increasing trend for 1959–2012 in eastern China, highly correlated with China’s gross domestic product (GDP) that represents increasing trend of pollutant emissions, and to a lesser extent meteorological factors. The second mode shows decadal variations in central eastern China associated with Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Observations and numerical simulations suggest that Mongolia High and corresponding descending motion tend to be enhanced (weakened) in central eastern China during the positive (negative) phase of PDO. With PDO shifting towards a negative phase, the weakened Mongolia High and ascending anomalies make the air unstable and conduce to the spread of pollutants, leading to the decline in the wintertime HD over central eastern China since the mid-1980s. Based on above physical mechanisms, a linear model based on PDO and GDP metrics provided a good fit to the observed HD. Nature Publishing Group 2016-06-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4901280/ /pubmed/27282140 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep27424 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Zhao, Sen Li, Jianping Sun, Cheng
spellingShingle	Zhao, Sen Li, Jianping Sun, Cheng Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
author_facet	Zhao, Sen Li, Jianping Sun, Cheng
author_sort	Zhao, Sen
title	Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
title_short	Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
title_full	Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
title_fullStr	Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
title_full_unstemmed	Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
title_sort	decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern china tied to the pacific decadal oscillation
description	Haze is a serious issue in China with increasing concerns, and understanding the factors driving decadal-scale variations in haze occurrence is relevant for government policymaking. Using a comprehensive observational haze dataset, we demonstrate notable decadal fluctuations in the number of haze days (HD) during winter in central eastern China, showing a decline since the mid-1980s. The leading mode of the wintertime HD features an increasing trend for 1959–2012 in eastern China, highly correlated with China’s gross domestic product (GDP) that represents increasing trend of pollutant emissions, and to a lesser extent meteorological factors. The second mode shows decadal variations in central eastern China associated with Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Observations and numerical simulations suggest that Mongolia High and corresponding descending motion tend to be enhanced (weakened) in central eastern China during the positive (negative) phase of PDO. With PDO shifting towards a negative phase, the weakened Mongolia High and ascending anomalies make the air unstable and conduce to the spread of pollutants, leading to the decline in the wintertime HD over central eastern China since the mid-1980s. Based on above physical mechanisms, a linear model based on PDO and GDP metrics provided a good fit to the observed HD.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4901280/
_version_	1613592415396954112

Decadal variability in the occurrence of wintertime haze in central eastern China tied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

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