Large contributions of emission reductions and meteorological conditions to the abatement of PM in Beijing during the 24th Winter Olympic Games in 2022.

To guarantee the blue skies for the 2022 Winter Olympics held in Beijing and Zhangjiakou from February 4 to 20, Beijing and its surrounding areas adopted a series of emission control measures. This provides an opportunity to determine the impacts of large-scale temporary control measures on the air quality in Beijing during this special period. Here, we applied the WRF-CMAQ model to quantify the contributions of emission reduction measures and meteorological conditions. Results show that meteorological conditions in 2022 decreased PM in Beijing by 6.9 and 11.8 µg/m relative to 2021 under the scenarios with and without emission reductions, respectively. Strict emission reduction measures implemented in Beijing and seven neighboring provinces resulted in an average decrease of 13.0 µg/m (-41.2%) in PM in Beijing. Over the entire period, local emission reductions contributed more to good air quality in Beijing than nonlocal emission reductions. Under the emission reduction scenario, local, controlled regions, other regions, and boundary conditions contributed 47.7%, 42.0%, 5.3%, and 5.0% to the PM concentrations in Beijing, respectively. The results indicate that during the cleaning period with the air masses from the northwest, the abatements of PM were mainly caused by local emission reductions. However, during the potential pollution period with the air masses from the east-northeast and west-southwest, the abatements of PM were caused by both local and nonlocal emission reductions almost equally. This implies that regional coordinated prevention and control strategies need to be arranged scientifically and rationally when heavy pollution events are forecasted.