| Sandstorms also caused by human activity? |
| Friday, 14 March 2008, Written by Trouni | |
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As Melanie mentionned in her comment on the previous article, it often happens that sandstorms hit East Asia (China but also Korea and Japan) during this time of the year. The "yellow dust" from the Gobi Desert is blown eastward over China and thus contributes to air pollution in major cities like Beijing, by increasing the concentration of dust and particles.
In fact, NASA just uploaded on one of its website (Earth Observatory/Natural Hazards, already mentionned in this article) an interesting satellite image showing a dust storm over East Asia that happened on March 1.
On this picture, you can clearly see the cloud of tan-colored dust passing just south from Beijing. And by checking the graph posted a few days ago, you can also see the sandstorm's impact on Beijing's air quality: a pollution peak (API of 127) appears around March 1. You might think that even nature contributes to air pollution in China, but actually, it seems like human activities strongly increased the occurence of dust storms (from once every 31 years until 1949 to once a year since 1990). The municipal meteorological observatory forecast about 10 days of sandy weather in the capital city this spring... (source: Xinhua)
Update (18 March 2008): Comments
melanie gao wrote :
Wow, the NASA view of the storm is amazing.
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