Smog blankets Beijing
Flights in Beijing back to normal on Monday as heavy smog somewhat cleared but expected to blanket the northern-China again from Tuesday.
Heavy smog that blanketed northern-China at the weekend but cleared on Monday;
But it was likely only to be a brief respite on Monday with more choking-smog expected to return to the wintry-north within 24 hours.
Weather forecasts on Monday showed the smog would return to Beijing and nearby Tianjin city from Tuesday.
It was expected to persist until Thursday in Hebei, the heavily industrialised province that surrounds the Chinese capital, and He and Shandong provinces as the north battles freezing temperatures.
Authorities have been issuing smog alerts across China’s-north since mid-December, leading to orders for hundreds of factories to cut-production or close-outright and for restrictions on motorists to cut-emissions.
Pollution alerts are common in northern-China, especially during winter when energy demand, much of it met by coal, soars.
A pollution-index that measures the average-concentration of small-breathable-particles, known as PM2.5, dropped to just over 100 micrograms-per-cubic-metre in Beijing early on Monday from more than 500 on Sunday night.
The safe recommended level of PM2.5 is 10 micrograms per cubic metre, according to the World Health Organization.
A customer service staff member at the Beijing-Capital-International-Airport stated flights were returning to normal.
Heavy-smog on Sunday caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled and highways to shut, disrupting the first-day of the New-Year-holiday.
On Monday, the Beijing government maintained its orange alert for heavy pollution and continued a ban on heavy-duty construction trucks from using the roads.
An orange-alert is the second-highest level in a four-tier-pollution-warning-system adopted by Beijing when China, worried that its heavy-industrial-past was tarnishing its global-reputation and holding back development, declared a “war on pollution” in 2014.
Despite that declaration, public anger is mounting about pollution and what many Chinese see as government talk, but little action, to end it.
That anger has occasionally spilled over into protests.
Late on Sunday, the Ministry of Environmental Protection stated.62 northern cities had issued yellow, orange or red alerts.
The latest bout of air pollution began on Friday.
China has struggled to tackle the problem effectively after decades of breakneck economic growth, much of it based on heavy industry and the coal-fired power sector.