Beijing choked by worst dust storm in decade
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MonMonday 15
MarMarch 2021 at 7:40am
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The Chinese capital Beijing has been shrouded in thick brown dust due to heavy winds blowing in from the Gobi Desert and parts of north-western China and creating what the weather bureau has called the biggest sandstorm in a decade.
Key points:
Beijing is hit by dust storms annually due to deforestation and its proximity to the Gobi Desert
A fifth of flights in and out of the Chinese capital s airports were cancelled on Monday due to severe smog
Beijing was engulfed by the largest sandstorms in a decade on Monday morning, which originated in Mongolia, causing the visibility in most areas to be less than 1,000 meters and bringing the PM10 close to 10,000 micrograms per cubic meter in the city center.
JAXA, University of Tokyo & collaborators
In 2019, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft bombed the asteroid Ryugu, using explosives to shoot it with a 2.5-kilogram lump of copper to create an artificial crater. Scientists expected this impact to shake the ground, but its actual effect was far milder.
Images from Hayabusa 2 have shown that the surface of Ryugu has fewer small craters than we would expect for an asteroid of its size, which probably indicates that dust is being moved somehow to fill in … Continue reading Subscribe now for unlimited access
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