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michaelambling
Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Location: Paradise
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 Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:04 pm Post subject: WTF happened to the sky? |
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Down in Mokpo, I haven't seen even a sliver of blue sky since I got here a week ago--it's been a constant white/gray. Is this cloud, or pollution, or something else?
I know this is a really stupid question, so feel free to make fun of me. |
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Straphanger
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
Location: Chilgok, Korea
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| Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:07 pm Post subject: Re: WTF happened to the sky? |
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| michaelambling wrote: |
| Down in Mokpo, I haven't seen even a sliver of blue sky since I got here a week ago--it's been a constant white/gray. Is this cloud, or pollution, or something else? |
Mokpo is kinda nice. You arrived during the week of the warmest weather I've ever seen at this latitude. It's mist, haze... Dust particulate is up, but negligibly, compared to spring when the prevailing winds bring the hoang-sa down from China. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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Mokpo has had a LOT of pollution the last week, in fact, the worst in Korea at over 350+ in particulates at one point, topping even Incheon. The WHO says 50 is the maximum for health even though medical studies show people die of heart attacks at as low as 30, especially the elderly or those with cardiovascular problems (Thanks in part to China's industrial coal usage just upwind of us, Korea makes Los Angeles air look positively healthy).
Notice how I posted about the pollution in Mokpo just a couple of days ago (on Wednesday):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=136252&start=75
I check pollution levels often, check out the website, updated hourly, has many great features, take some time to check them out:
click here to see: http://eng.airkorea.or.kr/
Thankfully yesterday's rains has brought levels down from red and orange to yellow and green... though the haze is starting to build again.
If you click 'data retrieve' then 'hourly trends' and click 'jeonnam' and 'mokpo' you'll see that particulates have been rising all morning, is presently in excess of the lax Korean standard of 100, is at 134 and climbing...
then compare that with other places and health studies by googling 'particulates' 'pollution' and 'health' .... you are in a cesspool my friend... welcome to the peninsula |
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Thewhiteyalbum
Joined: 13 Nov 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
Mokpo has had a LOT of pollution the last week, in fact, the worst in Korea at over 350+ in particulates at one point, topping even Incheon. The WHO says 50 is the maximum for health even though medical studies show people die of heart attacks at as low as 30, especially the elderly or those with cardiovascular problems (Thanks in part to China's industrial coal usage just upwind of us, Korea makes Los Angeles air look positively healthy).
Notice how I posted about the pollution in Mokpo just a couple of days ago (on Wednesday):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=136252&start=75
I check pollution levels often, check out the website, updated hourly, has many great features, take some time to check them out:
click here to see: http://eng.airkorea.or.kr/
Thankfully yesterday's rains has brought levels down from red and orange to yellow and green... though the haze is starting to build again.
If you click 'data retrieve' then 'hourly trends' and click 'jeonnam' and 'mokpo' you'll see that particulates have been rising all morning, is presently in excess of the lax Korean standard of 100, is at 134 and climbing...
then compare that with other places and health studies by googling 'particulates' 'pollution' and 'health' .... you are in a cesspool my friend... welcome to the peninsula |
Yep, for the first time in 22 years I had to get an asthma inhaler from the doctors this winter. And I have lived in some shitty polluted countries.
I remember when I first arrived here (in winter) I didn't see blue sky until spring, and then not for 2 days running until summer.  |
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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm a bit of a sensitive flower when it comes to stuff like this, being from the green meadows of the deep south of NZ (which has some of it's own pollutants btw). I'm in Changwon which is quite a "clean" city and I've had a sinus infection for about a month which has now moved to my lungs. So I'm hacking and snarfing like an adjoshi these days. |
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michaelambling
Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Location: Paradise
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| Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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VanIslander, thanks for the link. I had no idea it was so bad--to be honest, I hadn't noticed the pollution at all, except for the constant white haze blocking out the sky. I assumed it was clouds, since breathing wasn't a problem for me.
Bear in mind, I'm from L.A., so I have pretty high tolerance for pollution. |
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Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
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| Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:24 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Mokpo has had a LOT of pollution the last week, in fact, the worst in Korea at over 350+ in particulates at one point, topping even Incheon. |
You know you're bad when you are worse than Incheon. This place truly is a dirty, polluted cesspool. 
I had always assumed Mokpo would be pretty nice. Where's the pollution coming from exactly? |
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MrRogers
Joined: 29 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| China |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/China_Shanxi.svg/705px-China_Shanxi.svg.png
Click the above to a map of Shanxi province, China... containing 3 of the top-10 most polluted cities in the world thanks to its coal production, Linfen being the most famous as it was named by Time magazine as the city in that province that is the worst in the world.
Notice how the province is directly upwind of the Korean peninsula, especially during the spring when high pressure systems move huge amounts of pollution in a tunnel/funnel like effect due to inversion, which traps pollutants from escaping upward due to the warm blanket of the high pressure systems. The whole "sand" and "dust" storm phenomenon of spring is a bit of a ruse, as desertification just compounds a toxic industrial problem.
Mokpo and Incheon/Seoul are first in line for the massive surges in air pollution from China which extend its effects to Japan and even to America, not just Alaska, but all the way to California and Colorado!
The great thing about May through October in Korea, certainly in the far south, is the prevalence of weather patterns from the southwest and south pacific, bringing at first the winds and Monsoon rains, then later the typhoons. This is the cleanest air of the year in Korea, from late spring through early fall, and it's entirely due to not getting many weather systems from China then.
I shout this because I have heard some nonsense on the subject by some Dave's posters trying to naturalize the haze as either being mostly humidity (yeah, mostly... in the summer!) and locally produced by farmers (yes, stuble burning happens and inversion traps it, but pollution patterns in Korea are consistent, rise and fall together in Incheon, Daegu and Gwangju, crisscross the peninsula... don't confuse the moehill with the mountain).
Jeju gets a lot less pollution than Mokpo and places northward because weather patterns from the most polluted Chinese provinces don't reach that far south (they do suffer from ozone, which is the synthesis of oxygen in pollutants like NO2 and SO2 into O3 "ozone" under conditions of heat, but thankfully in the summer the levels of overall pollutants travelling over are lower than the winter) . Poor North Korea gets it full force in comparison, as a half dozen of the top-20 most polluted cities in the world is in the Chinese northeast Manchurian region.
Anyways... hope that helps answer some questions. Remember google is your friend. There's been a lot of research over the last ten years of air pollution and weather patterns and health effects in Asia and in Korea specifically. |
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MrRogers
Joined: 29 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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yes, thanks VanIslander, for keeping the awareness of goings on in the environment and geography
I thought the past fall through December was just awfully polluted where I was in what is touted as the clean mountains - a combination of Chinese pollution (mostly) along with the stupid/ignorant burning that goes on everywhere - I even started wearing a mask... |
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toonchoon
Joined: 06 Feb 2009
Location: Gangnam
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