Figure 6.10
Anthropogenic Haze from China over the Pacific Ocean, early March, 1996. (A) The entire Red Basin of Sichuan Province filled with gray anthropogenic haze on a winter day as anticyclonic conditions were developing. In this west-looking view, the Tibetan Plateau stretches across the top of the view, and the snowcapped Himalaya Mountains appear in the extreme top left corner. The distance across the Red Basin is approximately 450 km; the horizontal distance from the Space Shuttle nadir to the basin margin is also about 450 km. (B) A coherent corridor of anthropogenic haze (arrows, probably a mixture of industrial air pollution, dust, and smoke) can be seen in the left half of the view against the dark background of the East China Sea. The corridor is about 200 km wide and probably much longer than 600 km (visible distance over the sea). In this southwest-looking view, the island of Taiwan (T) appears top left (350 km in length) and the east coast of China across the rest of the view. Topographic detail in China is degraded under the thick layer of haze. This picture was taken as the Space Shuttle flew over Okinawa-the distance to Shanghai (at the near point on the Chinese coastline, top right) is about 650 km. [NASA photographs, Hasselblad camera, 40 mm lens; (A) STS075-721-22, between February 22 and March 9, 1996, center point 27°N 105°E, altitude 296 km; (B) STS075-773-66, March 4, 1996, 01:29:47 GMT, center point 28°N 123°E, craft nadir 28°N 128.1°W, altitude 278 km.]
