Beijing turns yellowish as sand rains down
17/4/2006 15:00
Most Beijingers woke up today to find, to their surprise, that a "yellow
blanket" has covered up everything in the open air: from window sills, cars and
the ground to every single leaf on the trees.
"As if the desert has crawled
to Beijing overnight," said Zhang Rui, a citizen in Chaoyang District in eastern
Beijing.
He was not exaggerating -- Zhang said he spent at least 15 minutes
dusting the sand off his Jetta sedan.
A sandstorm hitting the China-Mongolia
border Saturday and Sunday started to affect Beijing at midnight on Sunday and
by daybreak, the city had turned yellowish.
"Unlike the particulate matter
that often exists in Beijing's air, the suspending granules hitting the city
today are bigger, though still less than 100 microns in diameter," said Wang
Xiaoming, an official with the municipal environment protection bureau. "That's
why we feel sand is raining down."
The particulate matter that often hovers
over Beijing is mostly less than 10 microns in diameter, he added.
Wang said
this is the eighth, as well as the worst, sandy weather that attacks from
outside Beijing this year.
The bureau forecast at 9:00 a.m. that the city's
air quality will be level V or hazardous on Monday, with pollution reading over
301.
The municipal government launched a pollution control scheme Sunday
night hoping to lessen the impact of the sandy weather. The city has sent
sprinklers to wash urban roads and construction sites have been told to halt
earthwork.
The city's meteorological bureau predicts drizzle in northern
Beijing on Monday night and says the wind scale will reach five on Tuesday. But
neither will be strong enough to drive away the dust, which will probably stay
until Tuesday evening.
From Jan. 1 to April 17, Beijing has reported 56 "blue
sky days", with excellent or fairly good air quality and pollution reading less
than 100, 16 days less than the same period of 2005.
Sandstorms could easily
occur at places with little rainfall, scarce vegetation and frequent gales, said
Qiao Lin, an expert China Meteorological Administration (CMA).
Northern China
experiences sandstorms almost every spring. The situation is worsened by higher
temperature this spring and the prolonged drought in northern China, according
to Qiao.
China launched an afforestation project in 2000 in Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region, which is blamed as source of sandstorm, targeting sandstorm
threatening Beijing and Tianjins, but it is difficult to contain the intensified
desertification.
Xinhua
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