sandstorms increase in cities due to global warming

First modification: 04/14/2023 – 17:27

With RFI correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde

The fifth consecutive day of dusty weather had the local Beijing media coughing on Friday morning, April 14. Because if sandstorms are not new this season, it is the eighth time this year that the Gobi winds have settled in the megacities of northern China.

Disguised as a cosmonaut

“Spring is here, the flowers are everywhere, but you can’t see them,” explains the 30-year-old from Jiangsu province, in a park in the capital with her sister and baby. The little boy is disguised as a cosmonaut to escape the dust that stings his eyes.

“We are from the south, and this year there are also sandy winds in the south. We have been here a week. And today we wanted to go outside. But look: we have masks! And for the baby, we have put this big plastic visor that I have to keep on her neck, because if the dust doesn’t get in,” explains another woman.

After an index of more than 500 in recent days, to about 200 on Friday, microparticle detectors can practically breathe, but Beijingers continue to wonder where the dust came from.

rising temperatures

According to the forest and rangeland administration, these recurring sandstorms are mainly coming from southern Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. This year they are also affecting the south of the Yangtze River: 400 million people in 15 provinces are affected, the China Meteorological Observatory reported last Tuesday.

Human activities, overgrazing and coal-fired power plants are blamed, along with accompanying global warming. “In March, southern Mongolia and northeast China saw a temperature rise of between five and eight degrees,” Liu Bingjiang, director of the department in charge of air pollution at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said. news website pangpai.

This warming, coupled with a lack of snow cover, has caused the permafrost to thaw prematurely, Liu Bingjiang adds, releasing more sand.