China News Service, July 28. Liu Youbin, spokesperson of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, introduced on the 28th that the national environmental quality continued to improve in the first half of the year. In terms of ambient air, the average number of good days in 337 prefecture-level and above cities across the country was 85.0%, an increase of 4.9% year-on-year; the PM2.5 concentration was 36 micrograms/m3, a year-on-year decrease of 10.0%; PM10 concentration was 59 micrograms/cubic meter M, a year-on-year decrease of 14.5%; O3 concentration was 141 μg/m3, a year-on-year decrease of 1.4%; SO2 concentration was 10 μg/m3, a year-on-year decrease of 16.7%.
Data map: Beijing Blue Sky.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a regular press conference in July on the 28th. Liu Youbin made the above statement at the meeting. He said that from January to June 2020, the national surface water and ambient air quality monitoring showed that the quality of my country's ecological environment maintained a good momentum of continuous improvement.
In terms of surface water, among the 1940 national surface water assessment sections, 80.1% of the sections with good water quality (Class I-III) were 80.1%, an increase of 5.6 percentage points year-on-year; the proportion of sections with poor water quality was 1.1%, a decrease of 3.2% year-on-year. The percentage of water quality sections in major rivers such as the Yangtze River and Yellow River was 83.8%, up 5.9% year-on-year; those that were worse than Grade V were 0.7%, down 3.8% year-on-year.
Liu Youbin pointed out that the average number of good days in "2+26" cities in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas was 59.7%, an increase of 12.6 percentage points year-on-year; the PM2.5 concentration was 55 micrograms/m3, a year-on-year decrease of 16.7%. The proportion of good days in Beijing was 71.4%, a year-on-year increase of 9.0 percentage points; the PM2.5 concentration was 43 micrograms/m3, a year-on-year decrease of 8.5%.