Dynamic harmonization of source-oriented and receptor models for source apportionment

Millions of premature mortalities are caused by the air pollution of fine particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 mu m (PM2.5) globally per year. To effectively control the dominant emission sources and abate air pollution, source apportionment of PM2.5 is normally conducted to quantify the contributions of various sources, but the results of different methods might be inconsistent. In this study, we dynamically harmonized the results from the two dominant source apportionment methods, the source-oriented and receptor models, by updating the emission inventories of pri-mary PM2.5 from the major sectors based on the Bayesian Inference. An adjoint model was developed to efficiently con-struct the source-receptor sensitivity matrix, which was the critical information for the updates, and depicted the response of measurements to the changes in the emissions of various sources in different regions. The harmonized method was applied to a measurement campaign in Beijing from January to February 2021. The results suggested a significant reduc-tion of primary PM2.5 emissions in Beijing. Compared with the baseline emission inventory of 2017, the primary PM2.5 emissions from the local residential combustion and industry in Beijing had significantly declined by about 90 % during the investigated period of the year, and the traffic emission decreased by about 50 %. The proposed methods successfully identified the temporally dynamic changes in the emissions induced by the Spring Festival. The methods could be a prom-ising pathway for the harmonization of source-oriented and receptor source apportionment models.

Automated summary

Millions of premature mortalities are caused by PM2.5 air pollution globally each year. To address this issue, the researchers updated the emission inventories and harmonized the results from source-oriented and receptor models, finding a significant reduction in pollutant emissions in Beijing and successfully identifying temporal changes during the Spring Festival.