Weiyang Hu

and 10 more

The importance of regional air pollutant transport modulated by large-scale synoptic circulation has been poorly understood for air pollution. In the present study of 5-year (2015-2019) observation, we targeted the Twain-Hu Basin (THB), a region of heavy PM2.5 pollution over central China to investigate the regulation of synoptic circulation governing regional PM2.5 transport for heavy air pollution. It was found that regional transport of PM2.5 predominated 65.2% of the heavy pollution events (HPEs) over the THB based on the statistics of observational environment and meteorology. By employing the FLEXPART-WRF model, the regional transport of PM2.5 from upwind source areas in central and eastern China (CEC) to receptor region in the THB was identified with three prominent pathways in the northerly, northeasterly, and easterly directions respectively. Based on T-mode principal component analysis in conjunction with the K-means cluster method, it was recognized that three regional PM2.5 transport pathways for the HPEs over central China were determined respectively by three patterns of synoptic circulation over CEC with 1) weak high air pressure to the north, 2) strong high air pressure to the northeast, and 3) weak high air pressure to the east, governing the cold air invasions southwards to the THB region in central China with the large contributions of 76.0%, 56.7%, and 53.9% to the THB- PM2.5 concentrations in the HPEs, revealing a significant modulation of large-scale synoptic circulation for regional transport of air pollutants in environmental change.