Hongliang Zhang

Fudan University · Department of Environmental Science and Engineering

Despite substantial reductions in anthropogenic emissions, ozone (O3) pollution remains a severe environmental problem in urban China. These reductions affect ozone formation by altering levels of O3 precursors, intermediates, and the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere. However, the underlying mechanisms driving O3 changes are still not fully und...

Wildfires burn approximately 3%–4% of the global land area annually, resulting in massive emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. Over the past two decades, there has been a declining trend in both global burned area and wildfire emissions. This trend is largely attributed to a decrease in wildfire activity in Africa, which accounts for a...

Severe airborne particulate matter (PM, including PM2.5 and PM10) pollution in India has caused widespread concern. Accurate PM concentrations are fundamental for scientific policymaking and health impact assessment, while surface observations in India are limited due to scarce sites and uneven distribution. In this work, a simple structured, effic...

Chemical transport models (CTMs) are widely used for air pollution modeling, which suffer from significant biases due to uncertainties in simplified parameterization, meteorological fields, and emission inventories. Accurate diagnosis of simulation biases is critical for the improvement of models, interpretation of results, and management of air qu...

Anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions are the major sources of ambient air pollution. India has experienced a dramatic deterioration in air quality over the past few decades, but no systematic assessment has been made to investigate the individual contributions of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions. In this study, we conducted a pion...

The Atmospheric Oxidation Capacity (AOC), often referred to as the self-cleansing ability of the atmosphere, considerably affects the concentrations of photochemical air pollutants. Despite substantial reductions in anthropogenic emissions of key chemical compounds in China, the mechanisms that determine the changes in the atmospheric oxidation cap...

Severe airborne particulate matter (PM, including PM2.5 and PM10) pollution in India has caused widespread concern. Accurate PM datasets are fundamental for scientific policymaking and health impact assessment, while surface observations in India are limited due to scarce sites and uneven distribution. In this work, a simple structured, efficient,...

Regional transmission plays a crucial role in the PM2.5 and O3 pollution of Shijiazhuang, a hot inland city in the North China Plain. To analyze the pollution pathways and potential source distribution, airflow backward trajectory cluster analysis, potential source contribution function (PSCF) method, and concentration-weighted trajectory (CWT) ana...

Atmospheric oxidation capacity (AOC) characterizes the ability of the atmosphere to scavenge air pollutants. However, the processes involved in China, where anthropogenic emissions have changed dramatically in the past decade, are not fully understood. A detailed analysis of different parameters that determine the AOC in China is presented on the b...

Dust is a major source of atmospheric aerosols. Its chemical composition is often assumed to be similar to the parent soil. However, this assumption has not been rigorously verified. Here, we generated dust aerosols from soils to determine if there is particle-size-dependent selectivity of heavy metals in the dust generation. Mn, Cd, Pb and other h...

the Chinese Government implemented "Clean Air Action" Phase I (2013-2017) and Phase II (2018-2020) consecutively to improve air quality. However, it remains unclear how these policies have impacted air quality since most studies merely focus on Phase I. In this study, we applied the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to investigate varia...

Atmospheric age reflects how long particles have been suspended in the atmosphere, which is closely associated with the evolution of air pollutants. Severe regional haze events occur frequently in China, influencing air quality, human health, and regional climate. Previous studies have explored the characteristics of mass concentrations and composi...

Chemical transport models (CTMs) are widely used for air pollution modeling, which suffer from significant biases due to uncertainties in simplified parameterization, meteorological fields, and emission inventories. Accurate diagnosis of simulation biases is critical for improvement of models, interpretation of results, and efficient air quality ma...

Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and its surrounding areas (hereinafter referred to as “2+26” cities) are one of the most severe air pollution areas in China. The fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and surface ozone (O3) pollution have aroused a significant concern on the national scale. In this study, we analyzed the pollution characteristics of PM2.5 and O3 in...

Surface ozone (O3) pollution under global climate change has become one of the top environmental issues. In this study, we focused on the coastal region in Southeast China with relatively low O3 precursor's emissions and complicated synoptic conditions, where the O3 trends and meteorological contributions remain unclear. An increasing trend of O3 c...

China is confronting severe ozone (O3) pollution although particulate matter reduced significantly, causing damages to public health and ecological systems. Here we utilized the comprehensive methods of ground‐level observations, satellite data, and source‐oriented chemical transport model to interpret O3 variations throughout China from 2016 to 20...

The atmospheric oxidation capacity (AOC) characterizes the ability of the atmosphere to scavenge air pollutants. However, it is not well understood in China, where anthropogenic emissions have changed dramatically in the past decade. A detailed analysis of different parameters that determine the AOC in China is presented on the basis of numerical s...

Background: A large gap exists between the latest Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQG 2021) and Chinese air quality standards for NO2. Assessing whether and to what extent air quality standards for NO2 should be tightened in China requires a comprehensive understanding of the spatiotemporal characteristics of population exposure to ambient NO2 and...

The greening impacts on China from 2000 to 2017 led to an increase in vegetated areas and thus enhanced biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions. BVOCs are regarded as important precursors for ozone (O3) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA). As a result, accurate estimation of BVOC emissions is critical to understand their impacts on air...

Ground-level ozone (O3) pollution has shifted from being a scientific topic to a governmental imperative in China. We analyze the mechanism for the O3 rise observed in Shanghai during the lockdown in the spread of COVID-19 in 2022 by combining utilizing ground-level observed data, an observation-based model, and a chemical transport model. We find...

Estimating the effects of airborne particulate matter (PM) on climate and human health is highly dependent on the accurate prediction of its concentration and size distribution. High-complexity machine learning models have been widely used for PM concentration prediction, but such models are often considered as "black boxes", lacking interpretabili...

Atmospheric age reflects how long particles have been suspended in the atmosphere, which is closely associated with the evolution of air pollutants. Severe regional haze events occur frequently in China, influencing air quality, human health, and regional climate. Previous studies have explored the characteristics of mass concentrations and composi...

Vehicle emissions are regarded as a primary contributor to air pollution and related adverse health impacts. Heavy traffic congestion increases traffic flow and thus produces more O3 precursor emissions, leading to more adverse air quality issues. Although the development of a vehicle emission inventory has received great concern and continuous eff...

Dust is a major source of atmospheric aerosols. Its chemical composition is often assumed to be similar to the parent soil. However, this assumption has not been rigorously verified. Here, we generated dust aerosols from soils to determine if there is particle size-dependent selectivity of heavy metals in the dust generation. Mn, Cd, Pb and other h...

Particulate matter (PM) is a global health concern and causes millions of premature deaths worldwide annually. High-resolution and full-coverage PM datasets are essential to support the accurate assessment of PM exposure. Here, a three-stage model framework is developed based on the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) simulations (12 km) and mu...

The greening impacts in China led to an increase in natural emissions, which may further aggravate the local burden of secondary organic aerosol and ozone. Thus, a robust natural emissions inventory is crucial for assessing the contribution of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) to air quality. However, using different satellites will intro...

Both the ever-complex international and subnational supply chains could relocate health burdens and economic benefits across India, leading to the widening of regional inequality. Here, we simultaneously track the unequal distribution of fine particle matter (PM2.5) pollution, health costs, and value-added embodied in inter- and intranational expor...

Vehicle emission is regarded as a primary contributor to air pollution and related adverse health impacts. Heavy traffic congestion increases traffic flow and thus produces more O3 precursors emissions, leading to more adverse air quality issues. Although the development of vehicle emission inventory has received great concern and continuous effort...

This study predicted three future land-use type scenarios in 2050 (including the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP126, SSP585, and carbon scenario) based on the Land-Use Harmonization (LUH2) project and the future evolution of land-use types considering China’s carbon neutrality background. The contribution of land-use changes to terrestrial natural...

Plants play a crucial role in global carbon biogeochemical cycling and natural terrestrial carbon sinks. Dynamic changes in plant-related carbon cycling processes under changing climate and atmospheric compositions are hot scientific issues concerning carbon neutrality. Ozone, as a damaging oxidant, shows a rising trend near the ground where plants...

Heterogeneous reactions involving aerosol water, i.e., haze chemistry, are responsible for high aerosol concentrations observed during severe haze events in Chinese megacities. Attempts were made to incorporate these reactions into air quality models, by using reactive uptake coefficients for gaseous precursors of secondary aerosols. Nonetheless, t...

Air pollution addresses short-term health effects on morbidity, especially for children. Assessing the impacts of air pollution on elementary students is critical for developing preparedness response strategies for this sensitive group. In the 2016–17 academic year, up to 687,748 groups of illness-related absence records and the information on whet...

Atmospheric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are in high levels in developing countries like India. However, limited measurements are inadequate for better understanding of their ambient levels and health effects. This study predicted PAHs concentrations in atmosphere and estimated their sources and health risks in India in four representati...

Tropospheric ozone (O3) concentration is increasing in China along with dramatic changes in precursor emissions and meteorological conditions, adversely affecting human health and ecosystems. O3 is formed from the complex nonlinear photochemical reactions from nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Although the mech...

The aging timescale of particles is a key parameter in determining their impacts on air quality, human health, and climate. In this study, a one-year simulation of the age distributions of the primary and secondary inorganic fine particulate matter (PM2.5) components was conducted over China using an age-resolved Community Multiscale Air Quality (C...

Plain Language Summary In China, the strict lockdown periods in February 2020 to slow the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) led to significant reductions in the emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx). While the total amounts of emission reductions have been inferred from surface and satellite observations, studies on the changes from major...

The high spatiotemporal variability of rainfall in tropical regions has posed a great challenge for generating satisfactory satellite precipitation products (SPPs). Most of previous studies have found a modest performance of various SPPs in estimating daily rainfall in tropical regions such as Malaysia. In-depth research on effective ways to correc...

Evaluating ozone levels at high resolutions and accuracy is crucial for understanding the spatiotemporal characteristics of ozone distribution and assessing ozone exposure levels in epidemiological studies. The national models with high spatiotemporal resolutions to predict ground ozone concentrations are limited in China so far. In this study, we...

After China implemented the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP), PM2.5 concentrations decreased but were still higher than national standards in major areas and ozone (O3) concentration increased unintentionally. To further decrease PM2.5 concentrations and reduce days with severe air pollution, the government promulgated the...

Hebei Province, located in the North China Plain (NCP) and encircling Beijing and Tianjin, has been suffering from severe air pollution. The monthly average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration was up to 276 μg/m³ in Hebei Province, which adversely affects human health. However, few studies evaluated the coordinated health impact of exposu...

A source- and age-resolved algorithm (SARA) was developed in the CMAQ model and applied to study the sources and ages of primary fine particulate matter (PPM) and secondary inorganic aerosols (SNA) in China during January 2013. Residential and industry are the major contributors to PPM and sulfate, especially for fresh particles. The contributions...

Northern China experienced two intense dust storms in March 2021, leading to reduced visibility and excessive particulate pollution. Understanding the cause of such extreme phenomena is important for further prevention. This study successfully reproduced the extreme dust storms using the Community Multiscale Air Quality model with refined bulk dens...

The response of summertime O3 to changes in the nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions, and contributions of different NOx and VOC sources to O3 in China are studied using a highly condensed photochemical mechanism in the Statewide Air Pollution Research Center (SAPRC) family (CS07A) and two popular anthropogenic emiss...

China is facing increasing ground-level ozone (O3) along with the reduction of particulate matter since the implementation of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) in 2013. High-level O3 poses adverse effects to ecosystems by inhibiting the growth of crops and other plants in addition to human health effects. The capture of...

Shijiazhuang is one of the cities in the North China Plain. In recent decades, this city has experienced high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which have potentially significant effects on human health. In this study, the health effects of PM2.5 exposure in Shijiazhuang were estimated by applying an integrated exposure-response model. Pre...

Being detrimental to human health and vegetation growth, ground-level ozone (O3) is becoming a huge concern as an air pollutant. The processes of formation, diffusion, transformation, and transport of O3 in the atmosphere are highly affected by meteorological conditions such as solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, and wind. Chemical transpo...

China is confronting increasing ozone (O3) pollution that worsens air quality and public health. Extreme O3 pollution occurs more frequently under special events and unfavorable meteorological conditions. Here we observed significantly elevated maximum daily 8 h average (MDA8) O3 (up to 98 ppb) during the Chinese National Day holiday (CNDH) in 2018...

Background: Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution is one of the most critical environmental and public health problems in China and has caused an enormous disease burden, especially long-term PM2.5 exposure. Global climate change represents another environmental challenge in the coming decades and is also an essential factor affecting PM2.5 po...