The Winds from China

The huge amount of pollution generated by China’s industrial revolution is having distant and long-term effects. An excerpt from the Spiegel article:

The cloud of dirt was hard to make out from the ground, but at an altitude of 10,000 meters (32,808 feet), the scientists could see the gigantic mass of ozone, dust and soot with the naked eye. In a specially outfitted aircraft taking off from Munich airport, they surveyed a brownish mixture stretching from Germany all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

These kinds of clouds float above Europe for most of the year and they've traveled far to get there. By analyzing the makeup of particles in the cloud, European scientists were able to identify its origin. "There was a whole bunch from China in there," says Andreas Stohl, a 38-year-old from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.

Read the rest here.

[HT: 2Blowhards ]