Atmosphere Journal Entry

Thick Haze Clouds China (March 2, 2009)

Satellite pictures show that a thick haze stretches for hundreds of miles across the Sichuan Basin in southwestern China. The huge cloud of pollution fills the skies over the lowlands south and east of the city of Chengdu. The smog is cutting sunlight and making breathing a chore for people with respiratory problems. Haze in the region tends to worsen in the winter, as air currents trap pollutants near the surface.

The cloud is part of a much bigger problem. More often than not, thick smog covers a large chunk of Asia these days. The pollution is mostly from car exhaust, wood-burning stoves, power plants, and factories. The enormous cloud sometimes stretches all the way from the Arabian Peninsula to China's Yellow Sea. From time to time, it drifts all the way across the Pacific Ocean and reaches western North America.

The smog contributes to the melting of Himalayan glaciers, the main water source for billions of people in China, India, and Pakistan. The glaciers supply the Yangtze, Ganges, Indus, and Yellow rivers, the lifelines of Asia. Rain brings dark pollution particles to the surface of the glaciers. As a result, less sunlight is reflected off the ground by snow and more heat is absorbed. This speeds up the melting already at work from global warming.

With less sunlight, rice harvests across Asia have dropped five percent since the 1960s. There's evidence the smog also affects rain patterns in India and Southeast Asia. Rain totals from seasonal monsoons have dropped in recent decades.

The smog also hurts peoples' health. A Stockholm University study links 340,000 heart and lung disease deaths in China and India each year directly to pollution.