The pattern and mechanism of air pollution in developed coastal areas of China: From the perspective of urban agglomeration

The green development of coastal urban agglomerations, which are strategic core areas of national economic growth in China, has become a major focus of both academics and government agencies. In this paper, China's coastal urban agglomeration is taken as the research area, aiming at the serious air pollution problem of coastal urban agglomeration, geographic information system (ArcGIS10.2) spatial analysis and the spatial Dubin model were applied to National Aeronautics and Space Administration atmospheric remote sensing image inversion fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) data from 2010–2016 to reveal the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics and Influence mechanism of PM(2.5) in China's coastal urban agglomerations, with a view to providing a reference value for coordinating air pollution in the coastal cities of the world. From 2010–2016, the PM(2.5) concentration in China's coastal urban agglomerations decreased as a whole, and large spatial differences in PM(2.5) concentration were observed in China's coastal urban agglomerations; the core high-pollution areas were the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, Shandong Peninsula, and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations. Large spatial differences in PM(2.5) concentration were also observed within individual urban agglomerations, with higher PM(2.5) concentrations found in the northern parts of the urban agglomerations. Significant spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity were observed among PM(2.5)-polluted cities in China's coastal urban agglomerations. The northern coastal urban agglomerations formed a relatively stable and continuous high-pollution zone. The spatial Dubin model was used to analyze the driving factors of PM(2.5) pollution in coastal urban agglomerations. Together, meteorological, socioeconomic, pollution source, and ecological factors affected the spatial characteristics of PM(2.5) pollution during the study period, and the overall effect was a mixed effect with significant spatial variation. Among them, meteorological factors were the greatest driver of PM(2.5) pollution. In the short term, the rapid increase in population density, industrial emissions, industrial energy consumption, and total traffic emissions were the important driving factors of PM(2.5) pollution in the coastal urban agglomerations of China.