Aggravating O3 pollution due to NOx emission control in eastern China

During the past five years, China has witnessed a rapid drop of nitrogen oxides (NOx) owing to the wildly-applied rigorous emission control strategies across the country. However, ozone (O-3) pollution was found to steadily deteriorate in most part of eastern China, especially in developed regions such as Jing-jin-Ji (JJJ), Yangtze River Delta region (YRD) and Pearl River Delta region (PRD). To shed more light on current O-3 pollution and its responses to precursor emissions, we integrate satellite retrievals, ground-based measurements together with regional numerical simulation in this study. It is indicated by multiple sets of observational data that NOx in eastern China has dedined more than 25% from 2012 to 2016. Based on chemical transport modeling, we find that O-3 formation in eastern China has changed from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) sensitive regime to the mixed sensitive regime due to NOx, reductions, substantially contributing to the recent increasing trend in urban O-3. In addition, such transitions tend to bring about an similar to 1-1.5 h earlier peak of net O-3 formation rate. We further studied the O-3 precursors relationships by conducting tens of sensitivity simulations to explore potential ways for effective O(3 )mitigation. It is suggested that the past control measures that only focused on NOx may not work or even aggravate O-3 pollution in the city clusters. In practice, O-3 pollution in the three regions is expected to be effectively mitigated only when the reduction ratio of VOCs/NOx is greater than 2:1, indicating VOCs-targeted control is a more practical and feasible way. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.