China News Service, May 15 This morning, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a regular press conference, and Liu Bingjiang, Director of the Atmospheric Environment Department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, introduced the main progress of air pollution prevention in 2019. He said that in 2019, the proportion of average good days in 337 prefecture-level cities and above was 82.0%; the proportion of heavily polluted days was 1.7%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points year-on-year; the PM2.5 concentration was 36 micrograms / cubic meter, which was flat year-on-year. According to the "2019 Atmospheric Environmental Meteorological Bulletin" of the China Meteorological Administration, the national average PM2.5 meteorological conditions in 2019 deviated by 5.7% from 2018. It is not easy to obtain a flat level. In general, the national air quality has been improving steadily, mainly showing the following four characteristics:
First, the decline in PM2.5 narrowed. In 2019, the PM2.5 concentration of 261 cities across the country fell 2.4% year-on-year, compared with the average annual improvement of 7.7% in the previous three years, the rate of decline slowed significantly.
Second, the O3 concentration increased significantly. In 2019, the concentration of O3 in 337 prefecture-level and higher cities nationwide increased by 6.5% year-on-year. The number of days with O3 as the main pollutant exceeded the standard, accounting for 41.8% of the total number of days exceeded, resulting in a loss of 2.3 percentage points year-on-year.
Third, the SO2 concentration has continued to improve substantially. The national SO2 concentration in 2019 is 11 micrograms / cubic meter, which is equivalent to the concentration in Europe and the United States and other countries; a year-on-year decrease of 15.4% and a decrease of 65.6% compared with 2013; 337 cities have all achieved SO2 standards for two consecutive years.
Fourth, heavy pollution weather in autumn and winter is still high. From January to February 2019, due to adverse weather conditions, the PM2.5 concentration in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and surrounding areas, and the Fenwei Plain increased by 24.1% and 26.6% year-on-year, respectively. In autumn and winter, many cities in Inner Mongolia and Northeast China experienced prolonged heavy pollution weather, and Baotou, Harbin, and even PM2.5 "burst table"; during the Spring Festival, two heavy pollution processes occurred in Beijing and surrounding cities. The task of air pollution control still has a long way to go.
Liu Bingjiang said that the national air quality had a good start this year. As of the end of April, the average number of good days in 337 cities was 84.8%, an increase of 5.0 percentage points year-on-year; the proportion of heavily polluted days was 2.6%, a decrease of 1.0 percentage point year-on-year; the PM2.5 concentration was 42 Micrograms / cubic meter, a year-on-year decrease of 12.5%.