Haze filled the air over the coastal plain of eastern China in early October 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on October 7, 2011.
A long band of haze, roughly 100 kilometers wide, extends east-west to the southwest of Beijing. South of Beijing, the haze fans out, extending from the shores of Bo Hai to the shores of the Yellow Sea. Along the shoreline, the haze is thick enough to obscure the coast.
Agricultural fires (visible as red outlines in the high-resolution image) contribute to the haze, but it also results from urban and industrial pollution.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
