posted on 2023-11-24, 00:21authored byJingran Zhang, Yiliang Jiang, Yunjie Wang, Shaojun Zhang, Ye Wu, Shuxiao Wang, Chris P. Nielsen, Michael B. McElroy, Jiming Hao
China’s
civil aviation market has rapidly expanded, becoming
the world’s second-largest. However, the air quality and health
impacts caused by its aircraft emissions have been inadequately assessed.
Here, we leverage an updated emission inventory of air pollutants
with improved temporal and spatial resolution based on hundreds of
thousands of flight trajectories and simulate aviation-attributable
contributions to ground-level air pollution in China. We find that
in 2017, the annual-average aviation-attributed PM2.5 and
O3 concentrations were 0.4–1.5 and 10.6–14.5
μg·m–3, respectively, suggesting that
aviation emissions have become an increasingly important source of
ambient air pollution. The contributions attributable to high-altitude
emissions (climb/cruise/descent) were comparable to those at low altitudes
(landing and takeoff). Aviation-attributed ambient PM2.5 and O3 exposures are estimated to have caused about 67,000
deaths in China in 2017, with populous coastal regions in Eastern
China suffering the most due to the dense aviation activity. We recommend
that industrial and policy stakeholders expedite an agenda of regulating
air pollutants harmonized with decarbonization efforts for a more
sustainable aviation future.