The "Asian Brown Cloud," a 3km-thick blanket of pollution over South Asia, may be causing the premature deaths of a half-million people in India each year, deadly flooding in some areas and drought in others, according to the biggest-ever scientific study of the phenomenon.
The grimy cocktail of ash, soot, acids and other damaging airborne particles is as much the result of low-tech polluters like wood- and dung-burning stoves, cooking fires and forest clearing as it is of dirty industries, the UN-sponsored study found.
"When you think about air pollution, many people think of industry and fossil fuels as the only causes," report co-author Paul Crutzen, a scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, told a news conference in London.
Often ignored, he said, was "biomass burning," including forest fires and the burning of vegetation to clear land or to warm the homes of poor people.
More than 200 scientists contributed to the study, overseen by the UN Environment Program in preparation for the World Summit on sustainable Development opening Aug. 26 in Johannesburg, South Africa. They used data from ships, planes and satellites to study Asia's haze from 1995 to 2000.
The scientists say more research is needed but that some trends are clear. Respiratory illness appears to be increasing along with the pollution in densely populated South Asia, with one study suggesting the pollution causes as many as 500,000 premature deaths annually in India.
The dense cloud of pollution -- also caused by auto emissions, factories and waste incineration -- cuts the amount of sunlight reaching the ground and the oceans by 10 percent to 15 percent, cooling the land and water while heating the atmosphere.
That phenomenon appears to have altered the region's monsoon rains -- increasing rainfall and flooding in Bangladesh, Nepal and northeastern India, while cutting back needed seasonal precipitation in Pakistan and northwestern India.
Floods, drought, sunlight reduction and acid rain all can hurt agricultural yields, with the report indicating the pollution may be cutting India's winter rice harvest by as much as 10 percent.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, one of the report's authors, said the extent of the sunlight loss was "a major surprise."
Scientists say it's too early to draw definite conclusions about the impact of the cloud, and of similar hazes over East Asia, South America and Africa.
"We need much more basic scientific data to be able to establish what are the consequences for human health and the environment," said co-author Crutzen, co-winner of the 1995 Nobel chemistry prize for his work on the ozone layer.
But they warn the impact could be global since prevailing winds can push pollution clouds halfway round the world within a week.
It's unclear what the haze's relationship is to global warming, which most scientists believe is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases that trap the Earth's heat. The pollution cloud appears to cool the area below by blocking sunlight.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS