Two years of air quality photos in Beijing

Working with the Asia Society and a photographer in Beijing, my former colleague Michael Zhao has designed an interactive site with an amazing collection of snapshots taken through the same apartment window in Beijing. The images date from March 2009 (as I write) all the way back to March 2007.

You can click through them all, and sort by best/worst air pollution index (API) and air quality grade for each day on the Asia Society project site. Or you can watch everything in reverse timelapse and zoom out to see tiny images of every day on Michael's site.

On my last birthday (Dec. 7), Beijing's air scored a C and the index was a 112, meaning "Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort." The photo above is a 115. The worst day recorded/photographed: December 28, 2007, with a score a 500!

Of course, there's some pretty neat tech wizardry that goes into measuring airborne chemicals. After the jump, check out a quantum cascade laser open path sensor...

A team from Princeton traveled to Beijing before the Olympics with some cool hardware:

Photo- Anna Michel.jpg
Photo: Anna Michel

One of the devices was a quantum cascade laser open path sensor, which emits a beam of light that can travel up to a kilometer to a reflector that bounces the beam back to its original source. The other sensor collected air samples at a single point and then passed a beam through the air in an internal chamber.
The sensors work on the principle that different gases in the air absorb different wavelengths of light, so the gases leave their signature on laser beams that pass through them. By analyzing those signatures, the researchers measured the concentrations of certain gases in the Beijing air.

The sensors made continuous recordings from mid-July to the end of August, focusing on measuring levels of trace gases, such as water vapor, ammonia, carbon dioxide, nitric oxide and ozone, which can affect climate and human health in a region... The researchers made an agreement with the Chinese government that data from their study would not be released until 2009.

This isn't to say Chinese officials and citizens haven't been working hard to fix their sky on their own. The Chinese government started taking measures to prep for the 2008 Olympics back in 1998. Though rapid growth (read: vehicle emissions), weather patterns and other pollution in general are still a problem, they're seemingly seeing some results: a recent report from Chinaview points out that Beijingers had a record 23 "bluesky" days and not one hazardous day this past April.
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Previously: