Climatology of wintertime long-distance transport of surface-layer air masses arriving urban Beijing in 2001-2012

•Multi-year Lagrangian modeling of air masses arriving in Beijing.•Negative correlation between the BV index and air-quality levels on a multi-timescale.•Identification of regions with highest priority for mitigating air pollution.

In this study, the FLEXPART-WRF coupled modeling system is used to conduct 12-year Lagrangian modeling over Beijing, China, for the winters of 2001-2012. Based on large trajectory tracking ensembles, the long-range air transport properties, in terms of geographic source regions within the atmospheric planetary boundary layer (PBL) and large-scale ventilation, and its association with air quality levels were quantified from a climatological perspective. The results show the following: (1) The air masses residing in the near-surface layer over Beijing potentially originate from broader atmospheric boundary-layer regions, which cover vast areas with the backward tracking time elapsed. However, atmospheric transport from northeastern China and, to a lesser extent, from the surrounding regions of Beijing is important. (2) The evolution of air quality over Beijing is negatively correlated with large-scale ventilation conditions, particularly at a synoptic timescale. Thus, the simple but robust backward-trajectory ventilation (BV) index defined in this study could facilitate operational forecasting of severe air pollution events. (3) By comparison, the relatively short-range transport occurring over transport timescales of less than 3 days from southern and southeastern Beijing and its surrounding areas plays a vital role in the formation of severe air pollution events during the wintertime. (4) Additionally, an interannual trend analysis suggests that the geographic sources and ventilation conditions also changed, at least over the last decade, corresponding to the strength variability of the winter East Asian monsoon.