Precision air quality forecast for Olympic venues

A new forecasting system is now able to tell the air quality at each Olympic venue 72 hours in advance, Beijing’s environmental authority and developers of the system said. “In our forecast, we divide the city into one-square-kilometer grids which include Olympic venues,” said Wang Zifa, a research fellow at the institute of atmospheric physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, developer of the system. The computer system can assess what physical changes and chemical reactions pollutants undergo after being emitted from a source. The forecasts will enable environmental protection authorities to have enough time to take emergency measures in case of extreme weather conditions, such as continuous days of little wind that are unfavorable for the dispersing of pollutants. Beijing has spent more than 120 billion yuan (US$17.39 billion) to contain air pollution since 1998. (June 13, 2008)