Environment | Macau and Taipa record air improvement in 2015

The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released a statement yesterday detailing the state of the local environment in 2015. The DSEC concluded that there had been marginal change from the previous year except in the area of air quality, where the Macau peninsula and Taipa recorded a marked increase in the number of “good air” quality days, and Taipa and Coloane registered an increase in the number of “poor” air quality days.
All four monitoring stations on the Macau peninsula and Taipa saw an improvement in daily air quality recordings. The station at Rua do Campo showed notable improvement, with the number of “good’ air quality days rising by 87 year-on-year to 221, and the number of “poor” air quality days falling by 34.
Data from the monitoring stations also showed a year-on-
year decrease in the number of days that exceeded the recommended limit for fine suspended particulates (PM2.5) in the air. Additionally, the occurrence of acid rain was down by 11 days year-on-year to 66 days in 2015.
The annual average air temperature rose by 0.5 degrees Celsius year-on-year to 23.2 degrees – the highest mean temperature since records began in 1952, says the DSEC.
Total precipitation was 1,341 millimeters (mm), down by 242.8 mm year-on-year. Meanwhile, the total duration of sunshine or insolation time was also down, dropping by 174.2 hours year-on-­year to 1,696.9 hours.
Total water consumed was 84,939,000 cubic meters in 2015, up by 1.7 percent year-on-year. Water consumption by households (36,324,000 cubic meters) and the business sector (43,145,000 cubic meters) increased by 3 percent and 1 percent respectively, while consumption by the government sector (5,470,000 cubic meters) decreased by 1 percent.
The Waste Water Treatment Plants treated an average of 192,965 cubic meters of wastewater per day, down by 11 percent year-on-year.
A total of 229,004 tonnes of domestic waste and 124,537 tonnes of waste from the business sector were collected in 2015, up by 4.6 percent and 1.3 percent respectively. DB