Beijing car restrictions not helping the pollution levels

Well, at least that's the conclusion I make from looking at the sepa.gov official website here which monitors (certain) pollutant levels. Last Sunday a new scheme for car reduction was introduced pre-games which allows cars to go on the roads only on odd or even days, depending on the number plates. Since then, although the traffic has noticeably decreased, the pollution levels have been steadily rising. I created the following from the data on the above linked site (apologies for the mistake in the figure, API index should simply say API).

It's worth looking at this blog for a thorough discussion of what these levels mean, but given that the visibility must be down to a few hundred meters today, it is clear that the current levels are really not good. Taken directly from that blog is the following:

1 = API 0-50 = excellent (old) => good (new)
2 = API 51-100 = good => moderate
3A = API 101-150 = slightly polluted => unhealthy for sensitive groups
3B = API 151-200 = light polluted => unhealthy
4A = API 201-250 = moderate polluted => very unhealthy
4B = API 251-300 = moderate-heavy polluted => hazardous

And given that I've seen the levels get to 500 on very very bad days, 100 doesn't look too chokingly horrible, though I understand that it is outside the guidelines set by the Olympic committee. With less than two weeks to go, I'm not sure what more they can do...

Beijing, we have a problem!

Well, I'm back in Beijing, currently suffering from jet-lag having managed a grand total of an hour sleep on the flight here from Munich via Dusseldorf. I'll be spending a couple of weeks back at my old department and will give a series of talks here on various research directions.

It's great to be back in this hot, muggy, chaotic, dynamic city, but one thing is clear:

There is less than a month to go until the start of the Olympics and the pollution is utterly horrendous! I mean, really, about as bad as I've ever seen it! My throat is already burning from the smog, and with visibility down to around a kilometer when we landed this morning, you could immediately smell the concrete, acrid stench as the plane door opened.

I do still believe that they will have it sorted for the Olympics itself, with a combination of cutting cars and factories down in the next couple of weeks and the huge program of rain seeding which they used to great effect last year. However, as far as I'm aware, the athletes are going to be arriving here in the next couple of weeks and I don't believe the problem will be solved by then. They are clearly going to have a short-term solution to this vastly long term problem and even that is going to be cutting it fine. I can see some of the athletes simply landing, seeing the current situation and heading back home.

I spoke previously about how I believed China was the only nation who would be able to turn the situation around in such a short time, but that was when there was two years to deal with the problem, not four weeks...we'll have to see.

In the meantime I have to write my talks for here which I only found out about a couple of days ago, and have some sleep to be catching up with too!

Beijing smoking

I've spoken many times about my love of Beijing. Sadly, these days she's a sick, sick city and I'm glad I'm not there. The API (pollution measure) which usually hovers around the 100-150 mark (compare with London which is rarely above 40 on the same scale) today hit 500 (which seems to be the top of the scale from what I can tell).

This is really serious for the inhabitants of the city. China has around 400,000 deaths directly related to pollution every year and I can't see that number lowering with the current trends. Beijing has just eight months to get its act together before the curtains open and everyone comes coughing and spluttering to the start line. I hope for everyone's sake that the media frenzy is enough to shame them into getting this sorted!

Air pollution in Beijing

I just heard from a friend that on CCTV 9, the English language channel on the Central Chinese Television network, that the trial run to remove a million cars from the roads has worked marvelously. The quote came through to me that:

BizChina (CCTV 9) states that "air quality has improved dramatically over the past three days" apparently, the particulate count dropped from 116 (ppm?) on Thursday to 90 yesterday

Well, I thought that this statement needed a little context, so I have created a graph from the month of August, up until yesterday to see what a dramatic effect the removal of so many cars from Beijing's roads has really had. The data is taken from sepa.gov.cn where you can freely look at the countries pollution levels. I've created a graph from Beijing's recent data to see what the announcement really means.

The cars were removed from the roads in the last four days of the graph. The sudden drop from 115 to around 90 (similar, as far as I can tell, to the other changes throughout the month) is the result of the cars, or so we're told. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but this sounds like statistics being used without any context behind them.

For more context on the pollution index, take a look at this, though China's own pollution index is not exactly the same as this one, they seem very similar.

Apologies for the hastily created graphics, I'm in the midsts of calculations as I type.