Comparison of air quality at different altitudes from multi-platform measurements in Beijing

Abstract. The features of upper-air visibility at altitudes of 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 km and the two-dimensional haze characteristics in the northwest of downtown Beijing were studied by using a multi-platform analysis during haze episodes between 17 December 2016 and 6 January 2017. Through the multi-platform data analysis in hourly and daily variation, the upper-air visibility increased along with the decrease of PM2.5 mass concentration. And the upper-air visibility on non-haze days was about 3–5 times higher than that on haze days with the ground-based Raman–Mie lidar data between 13 December 2016 and 11 January 2017. The vertical transport of pollutants can be inferred from the delayed variation of upper-air visibility between high altitude and low altitude. In addition, the two-dimensional haze characteristics could be studied by analyzing the correlation between vertical haze parameters (atmospheric boundary layer, haze thickness, and aerosol optical thickness) and horizontal haze parameter (upper-air visibility). The characteristics of multi-parameters have been analyzed and concluded for different haze levels.