Time.news – The city of Zhangye, in the province of Gansu, northwest of the China, was enveloped in a thick cloud of yellow sand that triggered a state of alert for the population, invited to stay indoors with the windows closed. According to the BBC, this new storm in Inner Mongolia has caused 6 deaths and a dozen missing.
The photos disseminated by the national TV broadcaster CCTV and on social networks showed the apocalyptic scenes of a meteorological phenomenon that actually spread to Northern China during the spring. In Zhangye, Linze County, the immense cloud of sand, several hundred meters long, which literally ‘swallowed’ buildings, factories, public buildings and shops, approached 48 hours ago and caused several traffic accidents for the poor visibility and increased pollution.
© Str/ Cns/ Afp
The Zhangye area hit by the sandstorm
A “green wall” to stop storms
The sandstorms that occur in China are often generated by the Gobi desert, a vast expanse located between China and Mongolia. It is the same phenomenon that reached Beijing last month, the most impressive of the last decade. The sky in the Chinese capital then turned yellow and air pollution rose to very high levels, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights.
To counteract the sandstorms, the Chinese government has been reforesting the areas on the edge of the deserts for several decades, precisely to create a “Great Green Wall” capable of blocking the wall of sand that cyclically forms. Due to climate change and global warming on the planet, sandstorms are likely to become more and more frequent in China and other Asian countries: higher and higher temperatures combined with drought create perfect weather conditions for the extreme phenomenon.
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