Post Date: 11 January 2017

Joint field study of air quality in Hong Kong

A joint Hong Kong-Sweden air quality monitoring campaign (Oct – Dec 2016) has just completed here at the HKUST Air Quality Research Supersite (http://www.envr.ust.hk/research/research-facility/background-materials.html). This is a joint effort between the atmospheric chemistry research teams of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (led by Prof Jianzhen Yu, Division of Environment and Sustainability) and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (led by Prof Mattias Hallquist, Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology), in which a number of advanced online high-time-resolution air quality monitoring instrumentation, supplemented with meteorology measurement and reference methods such as filter-based methods for characterization of PMs, were used to monitor and track the changes in the physical and chemical properties of atmospheric gases, vapors and aerosols at this upwind background site. The campaign also looked into how typhoons, cold fronts and other weather conditions affect the concentrations of the pollutants, and their transformation and aging dynamics, in particular through atmospheric oxidation.

Following the field campaign, the collaborated work between UST and Sweden will continue through further data analysis by the field measurement team and joint air quality modeling efforts led by Professors Jimmy Fung and Alexis Lau.

Figure 1. HKUST Air Quality Research Supersite. Online instrumentation is housed inside the shelter. The PM samplers are installed outdoor in the front while an AWS tower for meteorology measurement is set up in the middle.

Figure 2. The teams from Sweden and Hong Kong, in particular, left 6: Prof Mattias Hallquist and right 4: Prof Jianzhen Yu. 

Figure 3. A snapshot of the HKUST site in Sai Kung with a time-trace of the air quality represented by PM2.5 and the concentration of its major components obtained in the campaign. A number of events were identified for further in-depth investigation.