Abstract

In recent years, China’s air quality has significantly improved, driven by ambitious environmental policies such as the “Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control” and the “Three-Year Action Plan to Win the Blue Sky Defense War”. However, the evolving characteristics of pollution sources—including shifts in their distribution, composition, and emission patterns—have made it increasingly difficult to locate the origins of air pollutants accurately. Conventional methods, which primarily depend on ground-based measurements and model simulations, often suffer from substantial uncertainties, sometimes exceeding 200-300%, thereby limiting their reliability and practical utility.