Overview: Recent advances in the understanding of the northern Eurasian environments and of the urban air quality in China – a Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) programme perspectiveстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 25 мая 2022 г.
Аннотация:The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) Science Plan, released in 2015, addressed a need for a holisticsystem understanding and outlined the most urgent research needs for the rapidly changing Arctic-boreal region.Air quality in China, together with the long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants, was also indicated asone of the most crucial topics of the research agenda. These two geographical regions, the northern EurasianArctic-boreal region and China, especially the megacities in China, were identified as a “PEEX region”. It is alsoimportant to recognize that the PEEX geographical region is an area where science-based policy actions wouldhave significant impacts on the global climate. This paper summarizes results obtained during the last 5 yearsin the northern Eurasian region, together with recent observations of the air quality in the urban environmentsin China, in the context of the PEEX programme. The main regions of interest are the Russian Arctic, northern Eurasian boreal forests (Siberia) and peatlands, and the megacities in China. We frame our analysis againstresearch themes introduced in the PEEX Science Plan in 2015. We summarize recent progress towards an enhanced holistic understanding of the land–atmosphere–ocean systems feedbacks. We conclude that although thescientific knowledge in these regions has increased, the new results are in many cases insufficient, and thereare still gaps in our understanding of large-scale climate–Earth surface interactions and feedbacks. This arisesfrom limitations in research infrastructures, especially the lack of coordinated, continuous and comprehensivein situ observations of the study region as well as integrative data analyses, hindering a comprehensive system analysis. The fast-changing environment and ecosystem changes driven by climate change, socio-economicactivities like the China Silk Road Initiative, and the global trends like urbanization further complicate suchanalyses. We recognize new topics with an increasing importance in the near future, especially “the enhancingbiological sequestration capacity of greenhouse gases into forests and soils to mitigate climate change” and the“socio-economic development to tackle air quality issues”.