With only a few weeks to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, Chinese officials have been working hard to improve air quality for the Games. In order to help with this effort, a UK company has provided a state-of-the-art system to monitor pollution.
Poor air quality could pose problems for the Olympic athletes, especially those competing in outdoor sports such as cycling and marathon running. Since the main source of air pollution in Beijing is vehicle emissions, major restrictions on car traffic have been introduced 20 July – 20 September. In order to take 50 per cent (half) of the city’s 3.5 million vehicles off the road, private vehicles will only be allowed to drive on alternating days. Cars with high emissions will be banned.
On behalf of ESA, British company CERC has installed an Air Quality Forecasting System in Beijing. This allows Chinese authorities to monitor the effect of the traffic cuts on air quality at street level. Thanks to this new tool, pollution forecasts for the city have been produced since 8 July – exactly one month before the Games’ opening ceremony.
Three-day forecasts are posted daily on the Beijing Air Quality website www.beijingairquality.cn . They show pollution maps that predict levels of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particles and sulphur dioxide across the city. Users can view maps of each pollutant separately or the total health index with all pollutants combined.
Satellite data from European instruments on board ESA’s Envisat and NASA’s AURA mission will be added in the near future to improve emission monitoring still further.
