Foreign experts to check Beijing air

By Li Xinran  |   2008-6-19  |     ONLINE EDITION

BEIJING has hired overseas environmental experts to join a 12-member-panel for air pollution monitoring, forecasting and assessment during Olympics, Beijing News reported today.

The panel will reportedly include members from China and abroad including experts from Italy and the United States.

The city will deliver air quality forecasts for the next day, the next three days or even a week, said Tang Xiaoyan, head of the panel.

Beijing may also instigate stricter controls over pollution in bad weather, according to Tang.

Monitoring has been launched since June 1, based on 27 inspection spots around the city as well as 18 temporary surveying stations at Olympic venues, according to the environmental watchdog for China's capital.

Beijing has also introduced a new forecasting system to predict the air quality at each Olympic venue 72 hours in advance, according to earlier media reports.

"In our forecast, we divide the city into one-square-kilometer grids which include Olympic venues," said Wang Zifa, a research fellow at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the developer of the system.

The new system can assess how pollutants flow in the air, what kind of physical changes and chemical reactions they undergo, and what secondary pollutants and their density are produced, according to Wang.

The forecasts will give environmental protection authorities enough time to take emergency measures in case of extreme weather conditions, such as continuous days of little wind which are unfavorable for the dispersion of pollutants, Xinhua news agency reported.

Beijing has spent more than 120 billion yuan (US$17.3 billion) on controlling air pollution since 1998. The city has expanded public transport, tested a temporary traffic ban that will be adopted during the Games and relocated polluting factories, according to Xinhua.

Surrounding areas are helping the capital achieve its anti-pollution goals.