Sunday, January 22, 2006

Darker Days in China as Sun Gets Dimmer

Interesting story about smog in China. It must be all the coal they're still burning to boil water and make steam to heat buildings during winter. Probably don't have to do smog check every two years on their cars as well.

==========

Smog is blocking sunlight in China and making much of the country significantly darker than it was half a century ago.

Using nearly 500 instruments spread throughout the country that record the amount of sunlight reaching the ground, researchers found that solar radiation has decreased by about 2 percent per decade since 1954.

The country is roughly 10 percent darker on average than it was 50 years ago.

1 comment:

ocgal22 said...

It's not just darker . . . it smells there too. Was in Shanghai a couple of months ago and the air was just foul. I asked folks in the office about it, and they had no idea what I was talking about regarding the smell of pollution -- they are way too used to it by now. That's not the way it was 5 years ago (the last time I was in Shanghai).