The New York Times brings us a rare piece of good news related to China’s environmental situation:
A storm of yellow dust darkens the skies above Beijing, an increasingly familiar phenomenon blamed on the disappearance of Asian forests. A week later, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, where annual precipitation levels are expected to decline as the climate changes, a snowstorm delights skiers.
The storms are starkly different and separated by thousands of miles, but scientists have discovered that they are linked.
Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego, have discovered that dust storms in Asia could help douse the Sierras with snow, bolstering California’s economy and rejuvenating its environment.
This will certainly be appreciated at central California’s China Peak, a Sierra Nevadan resort where some poetically-just fresh powder might fall thanks to dusty skies on the other side of the Pacific. The archives of Fresno, California’s KSEE24 News give us a brief history of the mountain and its namesake: Video no longer available.
