Mel­ting ice in the Arc­tic leads to air pol­lu­ti­on in Chi­na

The enorm­ous air pol­lu­ti­on in major Chi­ne­se cities could be rela­ted to arc­tic mel­ting sea ice. This sur­pri­sing link bet­ween glo­bal warm­ing and air pol­lu­ti­on is the result of a stu­dy, that has now been published in Sci­ence Advan­ces.

Air pol­lu­ti­on is not­hing new in China’s big cities. Howe­ver, the haze was par­ti­cu­lar­ly bad in Janu­ary 2013, whe­re the limit values were excee­ded in almost all major Chi­ne­se cities for four weeks.

Mel­ting sea ice in the Arc­tic and per­sis­tent snow­fall over Sibe­ria led to a chan­ge in air cir­cu­la­ti­on at the end of 2012. The cold air mas­ses moved towards east to Korea and Japan, while in eas­tern Chi­na the air was not moving at all. In Win­ter the­re are usual­ly strong winds in regi­ons such as Bei­jing.

The sci­en­tists are sure that mel­ting ice and hea­vy snow­fall have at least inten­si­fied the haze. They suspect that simi­lar events will hap­pen in the future and that the Olym­pic Win­ter Games in 2022 could also be affec­ted.

Foto: Erhard Stenz, Crea­ti­ve Com­mons

Quel­len: Malay­si­an Digest, Sci­ence Advan­ces

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