A thick shroud of haze lingers over China, turning the sky an opaque grey over most of the eastern provinces and almost completely blotting out details of the land surface in this true-color scene. Beijing, China’s capital city, is situated roughly 150 km (93 miles) west of Bo Hai Bay, under what appears to the densest portion of the aerosol pollution. These data were collected on January 11, 2002, by the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), flying aboard OrbView 2.

The heavy aerosol concentrations can be seen blowing eastward across the Bo Hai Bay and Yellow Sea. It appears that some of the pollution has reached as far east as North and South Korea and the islands of Japan.

Image courtesy the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE

Instrument: 

OrbView-2 - SeaWiFS