With El Niño coming, will the haze get worse this autumn and winter? The Ministry of Ecology and Environment conducts advance research and judgment

Beijing News (Reporter Zhang Lu) Autumn and winter are seasons when air pollution is relatively high. What will the quality of the atmospheric environment be like this autumn and winter? On September 22, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a regular press conference for September. Pei Xiaofei, spokesperson of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, responded to relevant issues.

Pei Xiaofei said that in autumn and winter, static and temperature inversion weather is prone to occur, and atmospheric diffusion conditions deteriorate, leading to the accumulation of pollutants. Coupled with the increase in pollutant emissions caused by heating in winter, autumn and winter have become the seasons with high incidence of air pollution in my country.

According to the latest report from the World Meteorological Organization, the El Niño phenomenon has already formed and may further intensify and even develop into a super El Niño event. “Based on historical experience, super strong El Niño often leads to weaker East Asian winter monsoons in autumn and winter, reduced cold air activity in northern my country, worsening atmospheric diffusion conditions, and prone to long-term and large-scale heavy pollution processes.” Pei Xiaofei took the latest El Niño event as an example. From the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, my country has experienced a long-term and large-scale “New Year’s Eve haze” that lasted for 16 days and affected an area of 2.7 million square kilometers, accounting for more than 28% of my country’s land area. A single pollution process increased the annual PM2.5 concentration by 2.4 micrograms/cubic meter. Nearly 100 cities experienced severe pollution, causing serious impacts.

“Faced with the severe situation of air pollution prevention and control this autumn and winter, we will establish bottom-line thinking and limit thinking, strengthen risk awareness, plan and deploy in advance, and make every effort to prepare for long-term, large-scale, heavy pollution weather.” He said that we must update the plan and lay a solid foundation for emission reduction. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment will guide all localities to further optimize their response plans for heavy pollution weather, deepen the classification and differentiated management and control of atmospheric environmental performance in key industries, refine the emission reduction list, and implement control measures into every enterprise and every production line to ensure operability and execution.

At the same time, based on the actual situation, we will implement phased differentiated emission reduction measures in autumn and winter, focusing on key industries with high emission reduction potential, little economic disruption, and easy implementation, and implement time-sharing, zoning, classification, and hierarchical precise management and control. In addition, local governments are guided to coordinate the relationship between air quality, economic development, and people’s livelihood security, manage exempted enterprises, and resolutely avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach to emission reduction.

We will ensure the operation of the mechanism and strengthen emission reduction guarantees. Guiding localities to continuously improve the accuracy of pollution forecasts. Currently, the accuracy of forecasting PM2.5 pollution processes exceeds 90%, and the accuracy of pollution level forecasts reaches more than 80%. By predicting the pollution process in advance, issuing early warning information in a timely manner, leaving sufficient time for the implementation of various measures, we can truly achieve “early research and judgment, early warning, and early action.” “At present, we have established a three-level heavy pollution weather response plan system at the provincial, municipal and county levels. The scope of early warning implementation has gradually expanded from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas to the whole country. The early warning activation threshold has also been optimized, from the original continuous heavy pollution to continuous moderate pollution.” In addition, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment will guide each region to strengthen joint prevention and control, promptly report early warning information, clarify the linkage scope, early warning level and response time, and carry out regional coordinated response.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment will keep a close eye on key industries, industrial clusters, large emitters and large car users, and make simultaneous efforts online and offline. Make good use of online monitoring, satellite remote sensing, power monitoring and other technical means online, and rely on big data screening to accurately discover clues to problems; offline organize localities to increase atmospheric environmental law enforcement and severely crack down on environmental violations such as excessive sewage discharge and fraud. During periods of heavy pollution, the “Four Nos and Two Straights” approach will be adopted to carry out unannounced inspections and inspections in areas and fields with prominent problems, and urge all localities to strictly implement emission reduction measures to ensure that everyone can see more blue skies and white clouds this autumn and winter.

Editor Liu Mengjie