China is one of the largest country in the word and the research shows that the air in China is so badly polluted, that it’s been estimated that only 1% of the population breathes clean air daily. Smog is made from burning of fossil fuels, and in China there’s no shortage: exhausts from cars and coal-powered plants. These react with the atmosphere to create sulfate aerosols and can have a tremendous impact on the climate, refracting sunlight and even changing the ways the clouds from. But since China is on the other side of the globe, do we have much to worry about here in the U.S.? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest that China has been to blame for the nasty U.S. winters we’ve had over the last couple of years?

NASA’s JPL labs as well as the California Institute of Technology studies the moment of these pollutants in our atmosphere and their studies suggest that they don’t simply stay over China: They’ve been migrating over the U.S. atmosphere, wreaking havoc to our environment as well. And it’s not just affecting weather in the U.S.: a study published in Remote Sensing of the Environment found that wind and weather drop as much as 182 million tons of pollutants over the Amazon every single year. However, smog isn’t the only thing going into the air. Two recent studies showed how dust from the Sahara Desert might actually benefit the Amazon. In the same way smog is picked up in the atmosphere, so is dust from the desert. That dust is carrying phosphorus, a vital nutrient plants need to grow. 

Source: Discoverynews