Identification

Title

Weakened aerosol‐PBL interactions enhance future air quality benefits under carbon neutrality in China: Insights from the advanced variable‐resolution global model

Abstract

<p>China's pursuing the carbon neutrality goal could affect future air quality not only by reducing anthropogenic emissions but also by modulating aerosol‐planetary boundary layer (PBL) interactions. However, contributions of aerosol‐PBL interactions to future air quality benefits remain unclear. Here we conduct ensemble experiments using the variable‐resolution (VR) Community Atmosphere Model with full chemistry based on the scalable spectral element (SE) dynamical core with East Asia refined to ∼28&nbsp;km (SE_VR). Additional simulations at a uniform resolution of ∼111&nbsp;km (SE_UR) are conducted to help demonstrate SE_VR's advantages in projecting future air quality. Results of SE_VR show that the mean PM 2.5 concentrations in China would drop to below 10&nbsp;μg/m³ , especially in Sichuan Basin (SCB) where the frequencies of moderate and severe air pollution events are predicted to decrease from 60.7% and 11.3% to nearly zero respectively when achieving carbon neutrality. The aerosol‐PBL interactions would be substantially weakened with anthropogenic emission reductions. At SCB and Eastern China (EC), the weakened radiative effects of black carbon (BC) would contribute 34.3% and 71.6% to the increase in PBL height (PBLH). Consequently, these weakened BC‐PBL interactions reduce the surface PM _2.5 concentrations by 16.1&nbsp;μg/m³ (18.9%) in SCB and 4.6&nbsp;μg/m³ (16.4%) in EC. Notably, SE_VR outperforms SE_UR in projecting the frequency decrease of future air pollution events for its better reproducing current levels, particularly those caused by BC aerosols. This study highlights the importance of weakened aerosol‐PBL feedbacks on future air quality improvement and demonstrates the added values of variable‐resolution global models in air quality projections.</p>

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7qj7nk9

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

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Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

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Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright 2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU).</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-12-24T18:04:11.104710

Metadata language