[Explanation] After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia in 2020, Beijing's industrial and living activities have dropped sharply, but heavy pollution weather still occurs.
Recently, Liu Baoxian, director of the Beijing Municipal Ecological Environment Monitoring Center, said in an exclusive interview with China News Service that the fundamental reason is that pollution emissions are greater than environmental capacity.
[Concurrent] Liu Baoxian, Director of Beijing Ecological Environment Monitoring Center
The fundamental reason is that pollution emissions are greater than the environmental capacity. Although the impact of the epidemic has reduced pollution emissions a lot, it has not been desensitized to weather conditions.
Although (because) pollutant emissions have been reduced in all aspects of the epidemic, in general, cities have fallen more and rural areas have fallen less; February is still the heating season, and there is still a lot of heating demand; light industry stops more, heavy industry stops less , Such as some heavy industries such as steel, glass, and coke basically have not stopped.
Therefore, the base number of pollutant emissions in the entire region is still relatively high. In this case, severe pollution will still occur when extreme adverse (weather) conditions are encountered.
[Explanation] Liu Baoxian said that although severely polluted weather occurred during the epidemic, compared with the similar pollution process in 2014, the peak pollution and pollution level have both dropped by nearly 50%. This also reflects the effectiveness of pollution reduction for many years. Need to intensify efforts to reduce emissions.
[Concurrent] Liu Baoxian, Director of Beijing Ecological Environment Monitoring Center
We have no way to control extreme adverse weather conditions. We can only control the reduction of pollution sources. We still have to increase our efforts to reduce emissions.
Whenever it is said that the total amount of real pollutant emissions has dropped to a certain level, and if the weather conditions are desensitized, then there will be extremely unfavorable weather conditions, and the pollution process may no longer occur.
Of course, this will take a while, and it will require continuous efforts from everyone in the future.
[Explanation] Liu Baoxian also made a forecast for the air quality in the first quarter of 2021.
[Concurrent] Liu Baoxian, Director of Beijing Ecological Environment Monitoring Center
(2021) The first half of January is still good, but the second half is slightly worse.
From February to March, as the temperature rises and the cold air activity decreases, the overall diffusion conditions may be relatively slightly worse.
The overall trend is this. Of course, such long-term forecasts still have a certain degree of uncertainty. We will follow up the upcoming forecasts and all have relevant information (release).
Cheng Yu, Chen Hang, Duyan, Li Shuoxing report from Beijing
Editor in charge: [Tang Weijie]