资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The observations of atmospheric CO₂ mole fraction in urban area in China are relative sparse. Here, we present the first-hand observation of atmospheric CO₂ mole fraction from 2016 to 2020 at a city station (Hangzhou, abbreviated as HZ) in the Yangtze River Delta, which is one of the strongest CO₂ source regions in China. The CO₂ mole fraction at an adjacent World Meteorological Organization / Global Atmospheric Watch (WMO/GAW) programme site (Lin'an, LAN) are also presented and compared. The temporal variations, seasonal variations, and influence of COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed. Our results show that, the variations of CO₂ mole fraction in Hangzhou are mainly driven by the local emissions, both atmospheric dilution conditions (i.e., wind speed, visibility) and topography, and the temporal variations are apparently different with the suburb site of LAN, although the distance between the two stations is only 50 km. During the observation period, the CO₂ mole fraction at HZ is on average 15.6 ± 0.2 ppm higher than LAN, with two distinct peaks observed at 9:00 and 17:00–18:00, corresponding to traffic rushing hours. The growth rate of atmospheric CO₂ mole fraction is 11.2 ± 0.1 ppm yr⁻¹ before the COVID-19 pandemic (from 2016 to 2019), which is much higher than the suburb site of LAN, 5.4 ± 0.1 ppm yr⁻¹. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a plunge of atmospheric CO₂ mole fraction at HZ in 2020, with a value of 15.7 ± 0.7 ppm, corresponding to 3.5% lower than the year of 2019. But at LAN, the annual average CO₂ mole fraction in 2020 is 1.5 ± 0.5 ppm higher than the previous year, similar to the trend in the northern hemisphere. The different annual CO₂ mole fraction growth rate at HZ indicates that the CO₂ mole fraction at Hangzhou may be dominated by local anthropogenic emissions, despite the transport of airmass from the north and southwest.