Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

China's Smog As Seen From Space

We told you earlier this week about how smog choked the northeast Chinese city of Harbin, which is home to 11 million people.

Today, we get a stunning look at just how bad the problem is from an image taken by the Suomi NPP satellite on Tuesday. That murky gray you see below is all smog:

Today, as the smog has cleared, National Geographic highlights a big reason for China's terrible pollution: Coal is used to fuel 70 percent of the country's energy needs.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
KUER is listener-supported public radio. Support this work by making a donation today.