Choking smog yesterday blanketed Beijing and much of northern China as climate change talks opened in Paris and a new Chinese report raised the alarm about rising sea levels.
As the global summit began, the US embassy in Beijing recorded concentrations of PM2.5 — tiny airborne particles which embed deeply in the lungs — at 625 micrograms per cubic meter, 25 times above the WHO’s 25 microgram recommended maximum.
Plummeting visibility grounded flights and local authorities said levels in one southwestern district had reached 976 micrograms per cubic meter — more than 39 times the WHO limit.
Photo: AFP
In the center of the capital the air had an acrid taste, and skyscraper summits were invisible from the ground as a gray haze washed out color.
“You cannot even see people standing directly in front of you,” wrote one disgruntled commuter on Sina Weibo. “It feels like even the subway station is full of haze.”
Multiple flights into the capital’s second airport were canceled, an airline said, with the city’s main air hub adding that more than 50 aircraft could not take off.
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and is set to be central to the discussions in Paris.
The levels of PM2.5 in several cities in Hebei Province bordering Beijing were also well above 500, official figures showed.
Motorways were forced to close in Shandong Province where visibility fell to less than 200m, Xinhua news agency reported.
Beijing issued an orange-level pollution alert this weekend, its highest of the year, with residents advised to stay indoors.
Air pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, becoming a major source of popular discontent with the government.
Beijing’s severe pollution follows record-breaking smog in northeastern China last month, when PM2.5 levels reached 1,400 micrograms per cubic meter in the city of Shenyang — the highest ever registered.
Intense pollution — dubbed the “airpocalypse” — also garroted the capital in 2013 when readings approached 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter.
Such outbreaks are common across China, where Greenpeace recently found nearly 80 percent of cities to have had pollution levels that “greatly exceeded” national standards in the first nine months of this year.
China is estimated to have released between 9 billion and 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2013, nearly twice as much as the US and about two-and-a-half times that of the EU.
It pledged last year that carbon dioxide output would peak by “around 2030” — suggesting at least another decade of growing emissions.
Most emissions come from coal burning which spikes in winter along with demand for heating, which also causes smog.
Beijing’s severe pollution is expected to last until a cold front arrives tomorrow, the city’s environmental protection bureau said on its Web site.
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