A wet air stream currently passing through northern Taiwan is expected to absorb a substantial portion of particulates, which have been detrimental to the nation’s air quality since winter last year, gradually cleaning up the atmosphere, the Central Weather Bureau’s Weather Forecast Center director Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said yesterday.
Referring to a satellite image, Cheng yesterday said on Facebook that a gust of northerly wind was bringing with it a large amount of vapor to the Taiwan Strait.
Part of the vapor has blown onto Taiwan, forming a mass of low-altitude clouds, he said.
As particulates tend to absorb vapor, they cloud the sky when the air is dry. Conversely, after the particulates have absorbed a certain amount of vapor, they become heavier and fall to the ground, clearing the air, Cheng said.
It should also be noted that limited visibility does not necessarily mean poor air quality, he added.
According to Cheng, the air current is passing through western Taiwan and into central Taiwan.
“At present, the air quality is gradually improving, starting in northern Taiwan,” Cheng said.
However, areas that are out of the air stream’s path, including Yunlin County, Chiayi County, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, will not benefit from it, Cheng said.
Meanwhile, precipitation is expected in northern and northeastern Taiwan starting today in the morning through Wednesday, thanks to the northeastern monsoon and abundant vapor.
The probability of rainfall in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan this morning is 60 to 70 percent, with all three municipalities having a 90 percent likelihood for rainy weather tonight, with both the duration and amount of rain estimated to increase noticeably, the bureau said.
Precipitation in the three municipalities is expected to continue until Wednesday morning, followed by sporadic rainfall on Thursday.
However, whether the much-needed rain will help ease a prolonged water shortage remains to be seen, as it is still unclear whether the rain will fall in the catchment basins of reservoirs in the area, the bureau said.
The wet and breezy weather is also expected to drive temperatures down in northern Taiwan slightly in the early morning and at night, with temperatures dropping to between 14?C and 16?C, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching