Tag: yellow dust

The yellow dust this year has been absolutely horrible in Korea and it seems to get worse every year:

Image from the Korea Herald.

Korean consumers’ concern about fine dust, which is believed to come from China, seems to be legitimate as confirmed by a report published Thursday in the peer-reviewed international journal Nature.

About 30,900 people in Korea and Japan die prematurely every year due to fine dust from China, according to the study jointly conducted by researchers in China’s Tsinghua and Peking universities, the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Irvine.

Analyzing the number of early deaths from heart, lung and blood vessel-related diseases and the density and movement of fine dust, the researchers found out that 411,100 people worldwide died prematurely due to fine dust from outside their countries.

The researchers especially pointed out that China, as the largest producer of fine dust particles, causes the greatest number of deaths because of the high population density of itself and its neighbors.

“It costs less to manufacture goods in places like China and Southeast Asia, mostly because those places have cheaper labor than the West,” Steven Davis, co-author of the paper, said. “But they also tend to have less stringent environmental protections.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It should be interesting to see what comes out of this study from NASA where they are trying to determine how much of the pollution over Seoul is produced domestically compared to what blows in from China:

 The cockpit warning blared insistently as the plane spiraled downward to 500 feet above Seoul: “Too low, too low, terrain. Pull up, pull up, pull up.”

The pilots ignored the automated voice despite a nervous glance from a visiting reporter. Their mission was to take the DC-8 as low or as high as the NASA scientists working in the back required.

The flight was part of a six-week joint Korea-U.S. air-quality field study — known as KORUS-AQ — which officially kicked off on April 29. The timing coincided with the so-called yellow dust season that sees fine particulate matter swept into the air from neighboring China’s Gobi Desert.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the above link as well as more about Korea’s yellow dust problem at this link.

Visitors to Gyeongbok Palace in downtown Seoul wear protective masks after fine dust warnings were issued across South Korea on May 7, 2016. (Yonhap)

Not that Greenpeace has much creditability, but they are primarily blaming South Korea for air pollution over the peninsula instead of China:

Greenpeace challenged a common perception among Koreans that most air pollution comes from China, Wednesday, claiming that Korea is responsible for more than half of its particle-laden smog.

“Despite what is widely reported through the Korean media, from 50 to 70 percent of particle-laden smog, which is also known as PM2.5, is generated within the country,” the environmental group said at a press conference in Seoul.

“Yet the Korean government irresponsibly passes the blame on to China without having any strategies to tackle the problem itself.”

Greenpeace claim that the government has little understanding of PM2.5, which results in policies that will continue to increase pollution.

Greenpeace said that among all sources of air pollution, the nation’s 53 coal power plants should be identified for action

“But the government plans to build 13 more coal plants by 2021, while 11 are under construction,” Greenpeace said. “We wonder why the government remains passive in developing renewable energy sources.”

Greenpeace states that Korea relies on coal plants for 39 percent of its energy production and is the fourth biggest coal importer in the world.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but if they are talking every day air pollution then of course South Korea is primarily responsible.  However, if they are trying to infer that the yellow dust is primarily caused by South Korea than that is deceptive.  Most of the health problems from air pollution happen in Korea because of the seasonal yellow dust that indisputably comes from China.

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.

Green Initiative － Students turn barren Inner Mongolian desert into a lush green haven. #colorsofchina https://t.co/zXgOtH4wCh

— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) October 12, 2014

From Reuters:

Jeff Stith of the National Center for Atmospheric Research communicated with reporters via Web chat from a research jet flying 40,000 feet above the ocean as part of a mission to track dust and pollution particles blown from Asia to the United States.

“We have found enhancements in pollution levels in some of the upper regions of the storm clouds we studied, just yesterday for example,” Stith wrote.

Stith and his ground-based colleague, V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, aimed to study the interaction between the pollution and dust with high-altitude clouds bearing ice crystals.

Ice crystals are found in extremely cold clouds, and when the crystals are composed entirely of frozen water, they reflect lots of sunlight — that’s why these clouds look so white, Ramanathan said by telephone after the Web chat.

However, if particles of dust and a dark pollutant known as black carbon managed to get inside the crystals, these clouds might absorb more solar energy rather than reflecting it all, Ramanathan said.

You can see interviews with the two scientists here and here, but they say the significance of this dust mixed with Asian pollution blowing across the Pacific, is that they believe it effects weather patterns by influencing precipitation levels once the clouds reach the US. They also believe the dust and pollution is possible for anywhere from 20%-80% of global warming.

Here is computer enhanced image of the dust and pollution crossing the ocean from the PACDEX website:

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It seems like the dust has been getting worse nearly every year, maybe some of you Korea old-timers can verify if the dust was as bad 20-30 years ago as it is now. It will be interesting to see what the scientists findings are once they complete their research.