Bubble pie map of daily AQI over main Chinese cities during 1st quarter 2014

China bubble pie map of daily AQI showing pollution over main cities during Q1- 2014

In addition to our previous post, the above chart is showing that in average the days where air quality was good (AQI < 50) have been very limited over main chinese cities during the first quarter. 

This ranking covers the 190 largest cities in China, about 416 Mil people, accounting for about 63% of the urban population.

 Averaged over the urban population and during Q1-2014 period of 90 days, the daily AQI repartition had been the following: 

• 8 days /90 days or only 9% of total days had  AQI<50
• 37 days /90 days or 41% had 50<AQI <100
• 45 days or 50% had AQI>100

The area where the most polluted cities were located is shown in Figure 1 below. In this vast swath of land straddling the Northern and the Middle zones, urban citizens have seen virtually no days with AQI <50 during Q1 2014, apart Chongqing and Beijing.

Figure 1: China bubble pie of daily AQI zooming the Beijing- Wuhan- Chengdu- Xi'an semicircular area where are located the 30 most polluted cities

The  Southern coastal area presented in Figure 2 hereunder had shown over Q1-2014 relatively very few days where AQI was >100, but the good days with AQI<50 were generally very limited and the air was mostly moderately polluted (50<AQI<100).

Figure 2: China bubble pie of daily AQI zooming the Southern Chongqing-Shanghai-Guangzhou triangle of relative moderate pollution

The Southernmost cities of Haikou and Sanya located in Hainan "beautiful island" , were the only main cities with a majority of good air quality days: Haikou and Sanya had respectively 52 and 61 good days (AQI<50) on the 90 days period.