With February in the Bag it Looks Like a Grim 2017 in Terms of Air Quality Improvement

We're past the two-month mark for 2017. How are we doing on the government's pledge to improve the air this year?

Not good.

According to Ministry of Environmental Protection data for the city of Beijing, the average AQI for February was 101, a full 42 percent suckier than last February (which, to be fair, was one of the best months on record).

However, 2017 can claim pride of place over February 2015's AQI average of 137, and February 2014's horrendous 181.

Similar trends appear as we look at the year-to-date:Though we're only through the first two months, we're already riding a sizable air quality deficit with 2017's average AQI for Jan-Feb standing at 125, vs 2016's warm-and-fuzzy 84.

That's almost 50 percent worse.

But again whipping out those rose-colored glasses reveals that for the Jan-Feb period of 2017, we're way ahead of 2015's 134 and 2014's 154. You know what they say: two out of three ain't bad.

So depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty, you can look at the first two months of 2017 as follows:

For the glass half empty folks: the city's got a lot of air scrubbing and factory-raiding to do if they want to get back on track and meet air quality targets for the rest of this year. We're behind the eight-ball and going to hell in a handbasket, the trend is obvious: we're in for a bad year.

For the glass half full folks: Last Jan-Feb was an outlier, we're still on the downward trend, and we've got 10 months to improve. And rumors of a slowdown in the economy could mean a lot less demand from factories, and hence less emissions.

It's also interesting to note that while there's a lot of concern about bad air in Beijing, the majority of days have come in under AQI 100: 56 percent of them so far, to be exact.

A quick statistical breakdown of days so far this year (by the way, all of the AQI figures are on the Chinese scale, which is generally more forgiving at the lower end than the US standard):

  • 15 Excellent days (AQI under 50), or 25 percent of the days
  • 18 Good days (AQI 51-100), or 31 percent of the days
  • 11 Lightly Polluted days (AQI 101-150), or 19 percent of the days
  • 1 Moderately Polluted day (AQI 151-200), or 2 percent of the days
  • 10 Heavily Polluted days (AQI 201-300), or 17 percent of the days
  • 4 Seriously Polluted days (AQI over 300), or 7 percent of the days

To keep your mind busy and off the fact that it's been a lousy year so far in terms of air pollution, why not answer the government's call to suggest how you'd improve Beijing.

Image: Michael Wester