SW China's Sichuan Province shrouded in unusual bout of pollution
Beijing issued another alert for heavy air pollution on Monday evening, just two days after lifting the previous one. The city is forecast to welcome the New Year on Friday under another wave of heavy smog, according to the Beijing Youth Daily.
According to readings from the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center's 12 monitoring sites in the city's urban area, at 4 pm on Tuesday, the concentration of PM2.5 - airborne particulate matter under 2.5 micrometers in size - surpassed 200 micrograms per cubic meter.
Smog is also shrouding other cities in northern China, including Beijing's neighbor Tianjin. The coastal city will see two bouts of smog this week, one lasting two and a half days and the other four days, the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
The pains of air pollution are even being shared by Southwest China's Sichuan Province. Air pollution in the province will continue and even worsen over the next three days, Luo Bin, deputy head of Sichuan Environmental Monitoring Center, told the China News Service (CNS) on Monday.
Pollutant accumulation will continue on the heels of a weak cold front that has contributed to the current heavy air pollution in the Sichuan Basin, Luo explained.
Ma Xuekuan, chief weather forecaster with China's National Meteorological Center, told the CNS on Monday that Beijing has seen four waves of heavy smog this winter, twice the number seen over the same period in recent years.
Aside from pollutant emissions, Ma said unfavorable weather conditions such as weak cold fronts, stable atmospheric stratification and high humidity, can also cause smog.
When asked whether shelterbelt forestation projects in Northwest, North and Northeast China might contribute to smog by lowering wind speeds, Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry Administration, denied that forestation changes atmospheric circulation because it only lowers surface wind speeds, as quoted by news site chinanews.com.
Beijing issued its second air pollution red alert of the month as a bout of heavy smog blanketed the capital from December 19 to 22.
The capital's municipal government issued a notice on Monday that aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions by extending the scope of regulations on carbon-emitting companies and governmental agencies, the Beijing Daily reported on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, North China experienced a natural gas shortage that was relieved Tuesday after more than 260,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas were shipped to Tangshan, Hebei Province, Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
However,the gas was not able to be unloaded due to heavy fog and wind.
