South Korea Engulfed in Yellow Dust, Where Does It Come From?

There is a lot of things to like about living in South Korea, but the yellow dust has to be one of the worst aspects of living on the peninsula:

Image from the Korea Herald.

The worst winter seasonal yellow dust in five years blanketed the Korean Peninsula on Monday, prompting the authorities to issue health warnings against the sandy, chemical-laden wind from China.

According to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), yellow dust warnings were issued at 10 a.m. in Incheon, Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and part of Gangwon Province with dust advisories in place for most other parts of the peninsula except some southeastern cities, including Busan and Ulsan.

The dust warnings in the capital area were to be lowered to advisories at 4 p.m. as the number of fine dust particles gradually decreased.

A yellow dust advisory is issued when an hourly average dust concentration of more than 400 micrograms per cubic meter is expected to last for more than two hours. More than 800 micrograms leads to a yellow dust warning.

People are advised to stay indoors when yellow dust advisories or warnings are in place. When going outside, they are advised to wear protective glasses and yellow-dust masks.

As of 4 a.m., Seoul’s atmospheric concentration levels of “particulate matter (PM)-10” pollutants soared to 1,044 micrograms per cubic meter. This marks the worst yellow dust that has hit the peninsula during a winter season since Dec. 25, 2009, when the level recorded 963 micrograms.  [Yonhap]

I have always wondered how much of an effect on weather patterns that the yellow dust has in the region and there are actually scientists trying to figure that out.  In fact these scientists think the increase in yellow dust could be responsible for up to 80% of global warming.  Here is a map with satellite measurements of the yellow dust reaching the US:

For those that don’t know the yellow dust gets blown in from the Gobi desert where overgrazing of grassland is turning large areas of it into desert.  To make matters worse a lot of industrial pollutants from China’s factories are dumped in the desert and contribute to the amount of air pollutants that get blown over neighboring countries.  This is a provable man-made environmental catastrophe which little is done about.