Airpocalypse Now: Beijing’s Toxic Smog Measures “Beyond Index” Levels

Again.

Kyodo via APA Beijing resident wears a mask while walking in the Chinese capital on Jan. 15, 2015.


No matter what desperate steps the Chinese government takes—banning coal burning plants within the city limits, shuttering more than 300 factories, wiping out old vehicles and boilers, forcing heavy trucking to go nocturnal—this just keeps happening: Beijing’s smog has yet again soared off the charts.

On Thursday local time, Beijing measured “beyond index” levels of the dangerous airborne particulate matter known as PM2.5—considered hazardous to human health because the tiny particles can embed deep in a person’s respiratory system. Those sky-high levels have been measured several times since the US began measuring the city’s air using a device installed atop its embassy in Beijing in 2008, most notably during a “crazy bad” incident in 2010, and 2013’s “airpocalypse”.

Thursday’s levels indicated the concentration of PM2.5 exceeded 500 on an “Air Quality Index” (AQI) measured from the embassy. The Beijing municipal government maintains its own index, always notably lower than the US readings, which reported an AQI of 430—still hazardous. (Anything above 150 is considered unhealthy for the general population). Today’s levels are generally regarded as more than 20 times the limit recommended by the World Health Organization.

Despite the frigid mass of putrid air, this week’s levels don’t come close to records set in 2013, when the AQI surged to over 755. Then, expats gave it a nickname: “airpocalypse.” It covered 1 million square miles (2.7 million square kilometers) of the country with a pall of smog that impacted more than 600 million people. I made this chart then to show what exactly was in Beijing’s air, a lethal combination of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone. It also gives you a sense of how the Air Quality Index works:

One reason it’s so hard to control the air quality in Beijing is that the smog problem sweeps in from neighboring provinces, known as the “black triangle”—Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. Prevailing wind patterns in that area of China pick up the pollution from at least 38 coal-fired power plants and send it straight into Beijing, which is landlocked and tends to trap the smog.

Click map to see how prevailing winds sweep pollution into Beijing from neighboring provinces.

As I’ve reported previously, the smog is the main thing driving so much of China’s push to tackle climate change (reducing CO2 emissions will also cut pollution) and its exploration of natural gas through a major fracking push in the southwestern province of Sichuan. It’s worth noting that China continues to be the world’s biggest investor in clean energy technologies.

But so long as smog continues to blanket cities like Beijing, home to 21 million people, the government will continue to face mounting political pressure amongst an uneasy population that was promised, along with economic prosperity and greater freedoms associated with opening up to the rest of the world, a better quality of life.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate