Beijing chokes on yellow dust during the biggest sandstorm in nearly a decade

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Photos from Beijing, home to 21.7 million residents, show skyscrapers and cars shrouded in a thick haze, with air quality indexes registering a “dangerous” rating and authorities advising residents to stay indoors.

Many commuters continued to battle the elements, but walking and cycling through strong sand winds. Visibility in parts of the city was so poor that drivers had to turn on their headlights even in the middle of the day.

“In some places there are strong sand storms with visibility of less than 500 meters,” China’s Meteorological Administration said in a statement Monday. “This is also the strongest dust and sand weather to hit China in nearly 10 years.”

The air quality in Beijing was already poor due to the high levels of pollution. When the sandstorm hit, the city’s air quality plummeted to dangerous levels, according to the World Air Quality Index.

A woman cycles down a street during a sandstorm in Beijing on March 15.

The index measures the concentration of various pollutants in the air – the most important of which is PM 2.5. These harmful microscopic particles are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and are considered particularly dangerous because they can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter other organs and the bloodstream.

Beijing measures a maximum of 655 micrograms per cubic meter on Monday. The World Health Organization considers anything over 25 to be unsafe.

The sandstorm originated in Mongolia, where six people have died and 81 are missing, according to Chinese state-owned company The Paper.

The sandstorm gradually moved south from Mongolia. Beijing saw concentrations of the larger PM10 particles exceed 8,100 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the city’s Environmental Monitoring Center, prompting the Central Meteorological Observatory to issue a yellow warning for sandstorms – the second level in a four-star weather alert. levels. system.

Authorities advised the public not to go outside if possible, and the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education asked schools and educational committees on Monday to suspend outdoor activities.

Buildings in Beijing's central business district during a sandstorm on March 15.
Sand storms were frequent in the spring. In previous decades, there were at least two rounds of sandstorms every May, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. The frequency and severity of sandstorms were due in part to drought, increasing population pressures, and poor progress in regrowth, which rapidly deserted land in the north and northwest.

But sandstorms have diminished dramatically since then; the annual number of sandstorm-hit days in Beijing dropped from a peak of 26 in the 1950s to just three days after 2010, Xinhua reported.

Since 2000, the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars in preventing sand storms. The authorities have launched several reforestation and ecological projects and installed satellites to monitor sandstorms and warn weather agencies in advance.

Sand storms also hit northern Hebei and Shanxi provinces, western Gansu, and central and western Inner Mongolia on Monday, Xinhua said. Other parts of the country, including northern Xinjiang, see high gusts of wind. The sandstorms are expected to last through Tuesday.

Mongolia, which is north of mainland China, is experiencing strong cyclones, the meteorological administration said. The sand and dust from Mongolia has been drawn east and south across the northern regions of China, carried by the cold high pressure at the rear of the cyclone.

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