Atmospheric Observational Station

This China Project's atmospheric research is committed to building observationally validated, fundamental research on the physical and chemical dimensions of China’s atmospheric environment and the emissions that influence it, at local, regional, continental, and global scales. In addition to the observational research described below, it includes modeling research described here.

In November 2004, a Harvard team led by J. William Munger (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) and Tsinghua team led by HAO Jiming (Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering) deployed a permanent observational station for use in atmospheric research, including the China Project's GEOS-CHEM modeling activities. Since that time, the station has made continuous observations of key trace gases and local meteorological conditions. The station is sited in a rural area north of Beijing to distance it from the influence of individual sources, and to measure a variety of conditions as local meteorology shifts, from relatively clean background air to polluted urban plumes. In 2007, Tsinghua assumed full operational responsibility for the station and the Harvard contribution shifted to collaborative analyses of the observations.

A current paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions (Wang et al. 2008) uses station data to investigate variations of O3 and CO in summertime in the Beijing area.