Submitted 1 week ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
A 6 year old boy asked me I had no answer.
A) The wind DOES blow it around, here’s a really cool map that shows the realtime winds and smog patches.
www.iqair.com/ca/air-quality-map?srsltid=AfmBOooO…
B) Most of the smog in an area has been recently produced by the pollution source (factory, power planet, forest fire, cars, etc) it’s not building up over a very long time, usually a few days at most if the winds are really light.
There are also weather conditions that reduce air flow, sometimes for days at a time, where very little wind blows and a bubble of air keeps a lot of the pollution over the city.
Salt Lake City is a notable example of a spot where cold air gets trapped by the surrounding topography in the winter.
Good map!
You’re getting an unusual pattern in Southern California right now though. Usually our winds blow from the ocean, forming an inversion layer and trapping smog over the Los Angeles Basin as they hit the mountains. But atm the southeasterly Santa Ana Winds are pushing the smoke from the fires (which they exacerbated) out to sea.
Anecdote: I was living in coastal LA for a while, and yes the breeze from the ocean would usually push the air pollution away from us inland. But every once in a while there were those Santa Ana winds that would blow the air pollution from all of inland LA right through us and the outdoors would smell kinda bad. And then there were days without wind and the air was just kind of meh.
From Pittsburgh l, grew up across the river from a coke plant. If you’ve read an article on US Steel being sold recently it’s likely got stock footage from the plant.
But it never stops. These facilties run 24/7. In fact a lot of the ovens can break if they’re not running.
And then there’s the fact that the hills bottle things in (PGH sits at the base of the Appalachians). It gets really bad when there is a temperature inversion over the area.
It’s not as bad as it used to be though. Dad’s generation always talked of how the snow would be dirty after a few hours, which I don’t really see.
It’s not as bad as it used to be though.
I was in Pittsburgh for a while. Excellent town, great people. When I was there they were power-washing some of the buildings and it was amazing how different the buildings looked afterwards.
Then of course there was the nearby 1948 Donora smog disaster:
Hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. Steel’s Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant were frequent occurrences in Donora. What made the 1948 event more severe was a temperature inversion, a situation in which warmer air aloft traps pollution in a layer of colder air near the surface. The pollutants in the air mixed with fog to form a thick, yellowish, acrid smog that hung over Donora for five days. The sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluorine, and other poisonous gases that usually dispersed into the atmosphere were caught in the inversion and accumulated until rain ended the weather pattern.[3]
The fog started building up in Donora on Wednesday, October 27, 1948. By the following day it was causing coughing and other signs of respiratory distress for many residents of the community in the Monongahela River valley. Many of the illnesses and deaths were initially attributed to asthma. The smog continued until it rained on Sunday, October 31, by which time 20 residents of Donora had died and approximately one third to one half of the town’s population of 14,000 residents had been sickened.
Word. I hate cities, and I very much enjoy when I have reason to go there. There’s still some of the other things I have about cities, but not only are the people there great, but it doesn’t stink the way most cities do. The cleanup they’ve done has really made it a gem, imo
Wind blows smog away and disperses it to where it isn’t noticeable, but sometimes the air gets polluted faster than the local winds can carry it away.
After 9/11 all flights were grounded for 3 days. Because there were no planes flying around over the US constantly for the first time in a long time they were able to observe insane drops in air pollution all across the US.
When the stay at home order kicked in at the start of COVID and practically every car in the US stopped driving around we noticed a similar drop in air particulate buildup in the air all across the nation.
The issue isn’t that the wind doesn’t blow it around and it eventually settles out of the sky into our drinking water or whatever. It’s always doing that. The problem is we are just also continuously producing the pollution.
I don’t think we need to go full dark ages and stop all planes and cars, but I do think it would be nice to work towards less planes and cars or at the very least less pollution producing vehicles. I think short range domestic flights should all be electric planes maybe they can figure out how to get solar panels all over the wings and battery tech will get to the point where one day they can fly across the oceans on battery as well.
Now it’s not all bad news. We have already gotten SO much better about these things in the past ~80 years alone. The smog in major cities back in the 50s was horrible.
Heres a snippet of this article: …uchicago.edu/…/the-origin-story-of-the-air-quali…
“In the 1950s, a toxic shroud of pollution settled over New York City for six days as a shift in the weather trapped emissions from local coal power plants, factories, and cars. Some people called it “smaze,” a portmanteau of smoke and haze; the word smog hadn’t been fully popularized yet. After pollution levels spiked, dozens of people died. The same thing happened in 1963 and 1966.”
Yes winds do blow pollution, especially from a lot of coastal cities. Los Angeles is an exception because of the mountains nearish the coast that essentially disrupt those winds. So most of the year, the smog just accumulates over LA, contributing to its very low quality air. This is despite the fact that LA (and other Western US States) use a cleaner burning blend of gasoline (more expensive as well), has somewhat strict fuel efficiency fuel requirements, and smog checks for vehicles. Other coastal states don’t have the same restrictions yet still have better air quality.
It depends. Some areas with really bad smog have problems where the air in an area doesn’t mix with the surrounding air, trapping it and making it harder for the smog to dissipate. This is a common issue for cities in inland valleys.
dhork@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I went to Beijing several years ago on business. By a total coincidence, it happened to be just after the Golden Week festival, which is a national holiday and businesses were closed. I expected quite a bit of smog, but when I arrived everything seemed clear. My Chinese host took me out to see the Great Wall, and it was breathtaking, and also crystal clear. I was wondering if the dirty air I had heard so much about was a myth.
But then the work week started, and as the week went on and the factories started up again, I noticed that the air was getting dirtier. My Chinese host took me to see the Forbidden City at the end of the week, which was also extremely beautiful, but already the air was so thick that I couldn’t see the landscape anymore, only the buildings in front of me.
Nature does a good job at cleaning the local air itself, but when we spew so much crap in it Nature can’t keep up. So, yeah, smog happens because it constant pollution.
Amanduh@lemm.ee 1 week ago
China has never had pollution ever bro
Thorry84@feddit.nl 1 week ago
The internet is so full of dumbasses these days, it’s impossible to tell if anything is serious or sarcasm. Just add the /s on the end, even though it lessens the joke a bit. The nonsense people are spewing is off the charts these days. And that’s just the people, there’s also paid shills, political or foreign disinformation and Ai bots.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Yes stop spreading CIA propaganda. Pollution is a fake invention to remove credibility from China.
Noodle07@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Found the tankie /s
abbadon420@lemm.ee 1 week ago
China! Fuck yeah!! 他妈的
ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 1 week ago
Golden week festival??? What are you referring to. Do you mean Chinese new years. Japan has golden week.