International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Using the NO₂ density data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and ground-based observations, the effects of industrial fluctuations due to the financial crisis on local NO₂ pollution are quantitatively assessed. The results are as follows. (1) The global financial crisis caused distinct V-shaped fluctuations from May2007 to Dec2009 and the largest anomalies of more than 1.5 times the standard deviations at the height of the crisis period of Nov2008 to Feb2009, for major industrial products, thermal generating capacity, electricity consumption, and tropospheric NO₂ densities. (2) Among all industrial sectors, the thermal power sector was mainly responsible for fluctuations in local NO₂ pollution during the crisis period. Especially, in the Yangtze River Delta, the thermal power sector has the greatest share of coal consumption, namely 65.96%. Since electricity is mainly obtained from local coal-burning thermal plants without NO_x-processing equipment, installing NO_x-removal devices for all thermal power plants is at present an important, feasible way of controlling local NO_x pollution.

Index Terms—Financial crisis, structural changes with chow test, NOx pollution, Yangtze River delta.

Yin Du is with the KLME/ILCEC/CIC-FEMD/CDRC, NUIST, Nanjing, China (e-mail: duyinxie@ 163.com).
Zhiqing Xie is with the Jiangsu Climate Center, Jiangsu Meteorological Administration, Nanjing, China (e-mail: xiezhiqing9896@163.com).

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Cite: Yin Du and Zhiqing Xie, "Fluctuation Characteristics of NO₂ Pollution over Yangtze River Delta during the Period of Global Financial Crisis," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 270-275, 2017.