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The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region has encountered increasingly severe and frequent haze pollution during recent decades. This study reveals that El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has distinctive impacts on interannual variations of haze pollution over BTH in early and late winters. The impact of ENSO on the haze pollution over the BTH is strong in early winter, but weak in late winter. In early winter, ENSO-related sea surface temperature anomalies generate double-cell Walker circulation anomalies, with upward motion anomalies over the tropical central-eastern Pacific and tropical Indian Ocean, and downward motion anomalies over the tropical western Pacific. The ascending motion and enhanced atmospheric heating anomalies over the tropical Indian Ocean trigger atmospheric teleconnection propagating from the north Indian Ocean to East Asia, and result in the generation of an anticyclonic anomaly over Northeast Asia. The associated southerly anomalies to the west side lead to more serious haze pollution via reducing surface wind speed and increasing low-level humidity and the thermal inversion. The strong contribution of the Indian Ocean heating anomalies to the formation of the anticyclonic anomaly over Northeast Asia in early winter can be confirmed by atmospheric model numerical experiments. In late winter, vertical motion and precipitation anomalies are weak over the tropical Indian Ocean related to ENSO. As such, ENSO cannot induce a clear anticyclonic anomaly over Northeast Asia via atmospheric teleconnection, and thus has a weak impact on the haze pollution over BTH. Further analysis shows that stronger ENSO-induced atmospheric heating anomalies over the tropical Indian Ocean in early winter are partially due to higher mean SST and precipitation there. Significance Statement There exist large discrepancies regarding the contribution of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events to the wintertime haze pollution over North China. Several studies have indicated that ENSO has a weak impact on the haze pollution over North China. However, some studies have argued that ENSO events can exert impacts on the occurrence of haze pollution over North China. In this study, we present evidence to demonstrate that ENSO has distinctive impacts on interannual variations of the haze pollution over the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region in North China in early and late winters. Specifically, ENSO has a strong impact on the haze pollution over BTH in early winter, whereas the impact of ENSO on the haze pollution over BTH is fairly weak in late winter. Results of this study could reconcile the discrepancy of previous studies about the impact of ENSO on the haze pollution over North China.

With the development of industrialization and rapid urbanization, more and more rural resources are being directed into urban spaces, leading to rural poverty. The gaps between urban and rural have gradually increased alongside serious “rural diseases”. Thus, rural revitalization is an essential and important strategy in the new era for realizing better urban-rural integration. This paper proposes a rural system evaluation model to divide rural development spatial-multivariate zones as evidence for exploring and optimizing rural sustainable development models. The result shows that: in 2015, Miyun District was divided into six zones, including a city zone, a town development zone, an industrial zone, an agricultural zone, a leisure zone and an ecological zone. The agricultural zone, leisure zone and ecological zone showed evidence of village hollowing and waste, a weakening of agriculture and poorer infrastructure, leading to a lower-level economy when compared to other zones. Thus, this study explores a revitalization path for Miyun District through four methods: mechanism, skilled workers, industry and technology, and proposes three optimizing models to solve rural problems. Building a new town development zone, developing multi-talent education and integrating first-second-third industries would reduce the gap between the urban and rural and would realize urban-rural integration more rapidly.

Rural industrial land within the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has undergone significant and profound changes because of the decisions of local micro-subjects. This study uses the knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) analysis framework to analyze how farmers understand rural industrial land changes (RILC), how much farmers are willing to participate in RILC, and whether farmers have participated in RILC activities. Our results highlight that improving farmers’ knowledge regarding RILC is an effective method to increase the participation of local farmers in RILC activities and projects, and the degree of impact on farmers' practice from large to small is followed by the household effect, rural effect, and concept. A structural equation model was also developed to analyze the factors influencing the KAP of farmers. Although variation exists in the significant predictors of the different KAP components, political post, residential land ownership, farmland ownership, age, and employment satisfaction are shown to be the main external factors affecting farmer KAP. The structure of farmers' knowledge should be understood in detail to improve the level of knowledge of farmers. In addition, the publicity and education regarding RILC need to be improved to increase the understanding of farmers regarding rural industrial land policies to allow them to truly grasp the positive role of RILC, form good expectations for RILC and participate in sustainable rural industrial land use activities.

Satellite-based measurements are of crucial importance for the accurate global-scale estimation of precipitation at fine spatiotemporal resolutions. Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global...

Although the economy of a county that is linked to surrounding towns and rural areas constitutes a multiple basic economic unit within China's national economy, it usually exhibits independent characteristics and functions. Consequently, a county's economy plays a critical role in the overall economic development of a country's national economy. We created an evaluation index system based on entropy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of county economy across the entire Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. We found serious imbalances in the development of these counties, with county economies within Beijing and Tianjin being more advanced than those in Hebei Province. Furthermore, there were marked differences between county economies within prefecture-level cities of Hebei Province. The developmental level of counties in cities like Langfang, Tangshan and Chengde was relatively high. Conversely, the level of development of counties in Hengshui, Baoding, Xingtai and Handan was lower. Moreover, there were imbalances among cities in relation to county economic development, especially in Langfang, with smaller differences being found in Hengshui and Qinhuangdao. We analysed and identified the factors influencing differences between counties before providing recommendations.

For a deep understanding of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) collaborative innovation, we detected and visualized the communities of innovation in BTH Urban Agglomeration based on the patent cooperation network. China Patent Database was connected with Business Registration Database and the Tianyan Check to achieve the geographical information of organizational innovators. Spinglass algorithm was applied and ultimately 12 communities of innovation were detected. Based on the different structure characteristics, we further clustered the 12 communities into four typical structures that are hierarchical, single-center, polycentric, and flat structures. The hierarchical structure is usually large in scale and the cooperative intensity is relatively high. Single-center structure has a center with a high proportion of centrality and the cooperative intensity is relatively low. Polycentric structure has multiple centers with similar proportions of centrality. Flat structure is usually small in scale and has no obvious network center. In the patent cooperative network of BTH Urban Agglomeration, universities and state-owned enterprises occupied the centers and acted important roles to connect other organizations. Some communities of innovation showed significant industry characteristics, mainly involving six industry fields that are electric power, construction, petroleum, metallurgy and materials, municipal transportation, and railway. From the geographical perspective, some communities manifested local attributes and some demonstrated cooperation between regions. Beijing was the center of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei patent cooperation network. Compared with the pair of Beijing-Tianjin and the pair of Beijing-Hebei, Tianjin and Hebei were not closely connected. In the future, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative innovation should strengthen cooperation between Tianjin and Hebei.

The article focuses on the spatial policy of the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region under the new situation in China. Through a systematic analysis of the political integration process of the given region, the validity of the integration implementation and its pathways for improving are investigated. Based on the real situation of regional development, it is necessary to adopt a regional spatial policy to further advance the integration process, including integrated planning for the development of the region, promoting the integration of infrastructure construction, strengthening the integration of the industrial structure and resource allocation, etc. It was revealed that the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region gradually moved to the period of full implementation of the strategy after a period of preliminary preparation and a period of reaching consensus. The coordinated development of the region is, in fact, a spatial strategy with the aim of achieving a spatial balance of regional economic development by the optimal distribution of production elements. So, in accordance with the current requirements for the formation of additional benefits and the qualitative development of the regional economy, the spatial policy should be based on the close relationship of “prosperity of humanity” and “prosperity of the region”

Precipitation is an important part of the global hydrological cycle. The large- scale, high-precision continuous precipitation data obtained by satellite remote sensing detection technology has become an important source of spatial precipitation data. However, because the spatial resolution of remote sensing precipitation data is still low, it is difficult to meet the needs of hydrological research, which restricts their application in drought and flood analysis, hydrological simulation, etc. In response to this problem, this paper takes the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as the research area, downscaling the TRMM data and the GPM data space of the continuation plan, and increasing the spatial resolution of the data to 1 km. Compared with the original data, spatial downscaling data not only greatly improves the spatial resolution, but also increases the accuracy of the data, which has better applicability.

The atmospheric aerosol pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei(BTH) region of China is particularly serious. To quickly and accurately evaluate the aerosol pollution in BTH region using the remote sensing method – this article verified the accuracy of the global 1km resolution MCD19A2 aerosol optical depth (AOD) product to clarify its reliability in BTH region, moreover, MCD19A2 was used to study the characteristics of aerosols and its correlation with air quality index (AQI). First, the AOD spatial distribution in BTH region from 2014 to 2018 was obtained through the processes of MCD19A2 such as format conversion, mosaic. Then the AOD results were verified with AERONET measured data through accurate space-time matching, proving the high accuracy and reliability of MCD19A2 (R = 0.9504, MAE = 0.0863, RMSE = 0.1243, EE = 82.26%). Besides, based on the AOD results at different scales, the spatiotemporal characteristics of aerosols in BTH region were analyzed from the aspects of spatial distribution, annual variation, and seasonal variation. Finally, the study shows that MCD19A2 AOD and AQI have a high correlation and similar spatiotemporal characteristics, proving the direct indication of MCD19A2 on air pollution. This article plays an important role in the research of aerosol characteristics, air pollution monitoring and so on.

In 2014, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Development Strategy (hereinafter the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy) was formally proposed as a major national strategy, providing an unprecedented opportunity for the overall development of Hebei. This article evaluates the treatment effects of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy on Hebei’s economy and environment. Employing a panel data program evaluation method developed by Hsiao et al. (2012), we construct hypothetical counterfactuals for the GDP growth rate, the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP, and the geographic mean PM2.5 concentrations for Hebei in the absence of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy using the outcomes of selected untreated provinces. The results show that the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy increased the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP by an average of 2.53 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2018 and decreased the geographic mean PM2.5 concentrations by an average of 11.1 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2017. However, it does not appear to have had significant effects on Hebei’s GDP growth rate. The leave-one-out method demonstrates the robustness of the above results. This article suggests that Hebei should speed up its economic growth and bridge the gap with Beijing and Tianjin while ensuring the quality of its economic development and a sound ecological environment.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is one of the regions with the most dynamic economies, highest degrees of openness, strongest innovation capacities and largest populations, as well as an important engine driving China’s economic development. Currently, the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region faces many difficulties, including an inefficient distribution of regional functions, imbalance in industrial structure, low sophistication, and serious overburdening of resources and the environment. Promoting the overall coordinated development of the region has become an urgent challenge. In this paper, according to the conventions of industrial structure optimization, the three core indicators of regional industrial structure rationalization, sophistication and ecologicalization are constructed. With the help of the grey dynamic correlation model, the three indicators are coupled with the economic growth rate, and the industrial structure optimization index of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is comprehensively measured. The study shows that rationalization of the industrial structure in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is increasing but that this trend is not obvious; sophistication of the industrial structure is relatively high and has also been operating at a high level; however, the overall ecological level of the industrial structure in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is not high and presents the characteristics of high in the middle and low at both ends. In terms of the relationship between industrial structure and economic growth in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, ecologicalization of the industrial structure has the greatest influence on economic growth, followed by sophistication of the industrial structure, and rationalization of the industrial structure has the weakest influence.

Changes in heavy precipitation events (HPEs) are closely related to hydrological disasters, such as floods and urban water logging. This study investigated the spatiotemporal changes in HPEs by using hourly precipitation data from the warm season (from May to September) from 1980 to 2016 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region. Sen’s slope estimator and the modified Mann-Kendall test were used to detect the temporal trend. A circular statistical approach was used to analyze the diurnal distribution of HPEs. The study found that the temporal changes in the HPEs in the BTH region could be divided into three stages: 1980–1994, 1994–2002, and 2002–2016. The first period and the last period witnessed an increase in the frequency and maximum intensity of HPEs, while the second period experienced a decreasing trend in the frequency and maximum intensity of HPEs. By comparing the HPEs in the first and last periods, the study revealed that the short-duration HPEs (HPEs of 1–6 h in duration) became more frequent and more extreme, while the long-duration HPEs (HPEs lasting longer than 6 h) became less frequent and less extreme. In addition, the study found that the peak time of the short-duration HPEs occurred from 19:00 local standard time (LST) to 24:00 LST; however, the peak time of the long-duration HPEs occurred from 01:00 LST to 06:00 LST. Moreover, the peak time of short-duration HPEs tended to be more concentrated than that of long-duration HPEs. Because an increasing number of short-duration HPEs occurred in the period of 2002–2016, the peak time of the HPEs in the BTH region was delayed and more concentrated. Local temperature showed an obvious correlation with the changes in HPEs at the decadal timescale. Our study provided useful information about spatiotemporal changes in precipitation events at the sub-daily scale in the BTH region.

An evaluation indexing system based on the theory of coordination was constructed to estimate the urban carrying capacity (UCC) of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region with four subsystems: social, economic, environmental, and transportation. This indexing system revealed the interactions between "supply" and "demand." The improved entropy method was adopted to calculate the weight of 17 indicators and evaluate the comprehensive UCC of 13 cities in the BTH region using data covering the period 1990-2018. The results showed that two cities, Tangshan (UCC of - 0.0021) and Handan (UCC of - 0.0009), were "overloaded" in 2018, while the other 11 cities were "loadable." The social and transportation subsystems played the most crucial roles in the evaluation. Based on the results, Baoding achieved the highest UCC, while that of Tangshan was the lowest. The results could play a significant role in decision-making relating to the sustainable development of the BTH region. Three policy implications are proposed based on these findings: (i) the efficiency of resource utilization and scientific allocation should be enhanced and industrial optimization and upgrading should be promoted, (ii) the coordinated development of urbanization and environment in the region should be improved, and (iii) the integration of traffic decongestion measures should be faster, and industrial docking systems should be enhanced.

Intensive and extensive water consumption and its potential negative impacts are increasingly challenging regional development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (BTH). It is necessary to enhance the metabolic efficiency of both physical and virtual water, and the latter is often neglected in research and practical fields. The material flow analysis method was employed in evaluating spatiotemporal variations of the Water Resources Metabolism Efficiency (WME) for exploring the inherent driving mechanisms in the BTH region. Results indicate that the WME increased obviously and differently in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, as well as in the whole BTH region from 1990 to 2015. The changes in WME depend significantly on the improvement in society and economics. Water production and water consumption are crucial for the integrated metabolic efficiency of physical and virtual water, followed by other influencing factors, i.e., freshwater recycling use ratio (Rfw), total retail amount of commodities of unit water use (Cw), and industrial output value per cubic metre of water resources (Uio). The results could provide alternative references for efficient and effective utilization of water resources within and beyond similar cities.

The paper analyzed the variation characteristics of AQI and its correlation with PM2.5 and PM10 of in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region from July 2015 to July 2018 based on hours of pollutants in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, using AQI calculation method and statistical correlation evaluation method. Results showed that:(1) The air quality compliance rate in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region was 67%, the average AQI was 97.6577, and the air quality was good. The distribution frequency of primary pollutants was PM2.5, followed by PM10, which accounts for 78.9% of the distribution frequency of the six major pollutants, indicated that PM2.5 and PM10 had a greater impact on the air quality of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. (2) The correlation between AQI and PM2.5 and PM10 was significantly positively correlated. R2 was 0.8225 and 0.7749, respectively, P

Climate change have a profound impact on the production and life of the people in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. Precipitation and temperature are regarded as two basic components of climate. This study investigated the spatial and temporal characteristics of precipitation and temperature over the region from 1960 to 2013. Different methods were used to analyze temporal variation and the results are mutually verified. Wavelet analysis was adopted to analyze the abrupt changes of precipitation and temperature. Empirical orthogonal function decomposition method was utilized to analyze the spatial distribution of temperature and precipitation. The study yielded three major findings: First, the inter-annual decrease and increase of precipitation appeared alternately in the region. Temperature was rising significantly in the last 50 years, apart from a slow reduction in the late 1970s. Second, the spatial distribution characteristics of precipitation vary due to the distance from the ocean. The increasing trend of temperature in Beijing-centered region was more obvious than that in areas away from the sea. Third, precipitation and temperature show strong correlations in change. When temperature increased, the rainfall decreased. What is more, when the temperature mutated, the precipitation also changed rapidly. The results can guide local agriculture production and provide reference for the further study of climate change.

Research into urban expansion patterns and their driving forces is of great significance for urban agglomeration development planning and decision-making. In this paper, we reveal the multi-dimensional characteristics of urban expansion patterns, based on the intensity index of the urban expansion, the differentiation index of the urban expansion, the fractal dimension index, the land urbanization rate, and the center of gravity model, by taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) urban agglomeration as an example. We then build the center of gravity-geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model by coupling the center of gravity model with the GTWR model. Through the analysis of the temporal and spatial patterns and by using the center of gravity-GTWR model, we analyze the driving forces of the urban land expansion and summarize the dominant development modes and core driving forces of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration. The results show that: 1) Between 1990 and 2015, the expansion intensity of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration showed a down-up-down trend, and the peak period was in 2005–2010. Before 2005, high-speed development took place in Beijing, Tianjin, Baoding, and Langfang; after 2005, rapid development was seen in Xingtai and Handan. 2) Although the barycenter of cities in the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration has shown a divergent trend, the local interaction between cities has been enhanced, and the driving forces of urban land expansion have shown a characteristic of spatial spillover. 3) The spatial development mode of the Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration has changed from a dual-core development mode to a multi-core development mode, which is made up of three functional cores: the transportation core in the northern part, the economic development core in the central part, and the investment core in the southern part. The synergistic development between each functional core has led to the multi-core development mode. 4) The center of gravity-GTWR model combines the analysis of spatial and temporal nonstationarity with urban spatial interaction, and analyzes the urban land expansion as a space-time dynamic system. The results of this study show that the model is a feasible approach in the analysis of the driving forces of urban land expansion.

Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) and its surrounding areas are very important to air pollution control in China. To analyze the characteristics of BTH and its surrounding areas of China, we collected 5,641,440 air quality data from 161 air monitoring stations and 37,123,000 continuous monitoring data from air polluting enterprises in BTH and surrounding cities to establish an indicator system for urban air quality portraits. The results showed that particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters of

Cities of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) and its surrounding areas are a focus of air pollution control in China. This study analyzed the emission characteristics of industrial pollution sources within these cities from the perspective of big data, using 37,123,000 continuous monitoring data for enterprises in 31 cities. Three indicators were proposed to compare the spatial emission characteristics: industrial pollutant emission intensity (IPEI), industrial pollution concentration emission intensity (IPCEI) and the density of waste gas monitoring enterprise (DWGME). The IPEI and IPCEI of Yangquan, Taiyuan, Changzhi, Xingtai, Handan, and Hebi were considerably higher than the average level of the air pollution transmission channel cities (APTCC). The industrial SO2 concentration emission intensity in Yangquan, Hebi, Laiwu were 1826.9, 462.8, 301.4 mg m−3 per trillion yuan, more than twice the regional average for the 31 cities. We found there was a significant positive correlation between different industrial pollutants in the BTH and surrounding areas. Industrial SO2 emission have a positive correlation with industrial NOx emission in most of BTH cities, the correlation in Xingtai, Hengshui, Taiyuan were respectively 0.855, 0.969,0.696. Data mining and statistics on different time scales could be used to analyze the characteristics of industrial atmospheric emission sources, and could be applied in environmental decision support systems to make air pollution management more objective, reliable, and powerful.