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Atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 traced by 14CO2 and air quality index pollutant observations in Beijing and Xiamen, China

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Abstract

Radiocarbon (14C) is the most accurate tracer available for quantifying atmospheric CO2 derived from fossil fuel (CO2ff), but it is expensive and time-consuming to measure. Here, we used common hourly Air Quality Index (AQI) pollutants (AQI, PM2.5, PM10, and CO) to indirectly trace diurnal CO2ff variations during certain days at the urban sites in Beijing and Xiamen, China, based on linear relationships between AQI pollutants and CO2ff traced by 14C (\( {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2 ff}{{{}_{-}}^{14}}_{\mathrm{C}} \)) for semimonthly samples obtained in 2014. We validated these indirectly traced CO2ff (CO2ff-in) concentrations against \( {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2 ff}{{{}_{-}}^{14}}_{\mathrm{C}} \) concentrations traced by simultaneous diurnal 14CO2 observations. Significant (p < 0.05) strong correlations were observed between each of the separate AQI pollutants and \( {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2 ff}{{{}_{-}}^{14}}_{\mathrm{C}} \) for the semimonthly samples. Diurnal variations in CO2ff traced by each of the AQI pollutants generally showed similar trends to those of \( {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2 ff}{{{}_{-}}^{14}}_{\mathrm{C}} \), with high agreement at the sampling site in Beijing and relatively poor agreement at the sampling site in Xiamen. AQI pollutant tracers showed high normalized root-mean-square (NRMS) errors for the summer diurnal samples due to low \( {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2 ff}{{{}_{-}}^{14}}_{\mathrm{C}} \) concentrations. After the removal of these summer samples, the NRMS errors for AQI pollutant tracers were in the range of 31.6–64.2%. CO generally showed a high agreement and low NRMS errors among these indirect tracers. Based on these linear relationships, monthly CO2ff averages at the sampling sites in Beijing and Xiamen were traced using CO concentration as a tracer. The monthly CO2ff averages at the Beijing site showed a shallow U-type variation. These results indicate that CO can be used to trace CO2ff variations in Chinese cities with CO2ff concentrations above 5 ppm.

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Acknowledgments

The anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their valuable comments.

Funding

This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41773141, 41573136, 41730108); CAS “Light of West China” Program (XAB2015A02); the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2016360); the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, the MOST (LQ1301, 2016YFE0109500); the Chinese Academy of Science (QYZDY-SSW-DQC001, ZDBS-SSW-DQC001, Y354011480, and SKLLQGPY1610); and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, China (2014JQ2-4018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

    Zhenchuan Niu, Weijian Zhou, Tian Feng, Shugang Wu, Peng Cheng, Xuefeng Lu, Hua Du, Xiaohu Xiong & Yunchong Fu

  2. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center, Xi’an, China

    Zhenchuan Niu, Weijian Zhou, Tian Feng, Shugang Wu, Peng Cheng, Xuefeng Lu, Hua Du, Xiaohu Xiong & Yunchong Fu

  3. Open Studio for Oceanic-Continental Climate and Environment Changes, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

    Zhenchuan Niu & Weijian Zhou

  4. Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Weijian Zhou

  5. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an, China

    Xue Feng

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  1. Zhenchuan Niu
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  2. Weijian Zhou
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  3. Xue Feng
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  4. Tian Feng
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  9. Xiaohu Xiong
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Correspondence to Weijian Zhou.

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Niu, Z., Zhou, W., Feng, X. et al. Atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 traced by 14CO2 and air quality index pollutant observations in Beijing and Xiamen, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 17109–17117 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1616-z

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