There are strong indications that the climatic changes caused due to China pollution are taking their toll on the country’s grain production. New research has clearly indicated that the amount of light rainfall has reduced substantially with a 23% drop in the number of days that received light rain fall. This light rainfall is essential for crop production and hence any decrease in it will directly and proportionally impact the country’s ability to raise crops. Also the bad air quality and China pollution which are at the core of this problem are causing other environmental and health concerns.  Read more about China Renewable Energy Market Outlook

This is the first time that a study has directly indicated the existence of a link between the level of pollutants in the air and the extent of light rain fall critical for agriculture. The research was led by atmospheric scientist Yun Qian at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Qian said that the link has been established with the help of long term data. He further added that this may give people the impetus to reduce air China pollution and in turn ease the drought situation in North China.

China pollution woes began almost 5 decades ago when the country began its resolute journey towards economic growth. Today, the exponential economic growth and the China pollution problems which have grown in tandem have given researchers and scientists from the world over the perfect opportunity to study the impact of air quality China Pollution and climate on the amount of light rain fall.

Unlike heavy rainfall which causes flood any fluctuation in the extent of light rainfall can be severely detrimental to the production of food grains. Unfortunately it has been observed that the rainfall pattern in Eastern China has changed dramatically over the last 15 years due to China Pollution. As the situation stands today, the northern part of the country has consistently received less rain fall and has experienced increased instances of drought. This change garnered wide spread attention and group of scientists from Sweden, USA and China wanted to investigate the reason for the change in rainfall pattern.

Previous work conducted in the field of pollution and its impact on rainfall has revealed that pollution can interfere with light rains above oceans, so it was not difficult to see such a phenomenon taking place over land as well due to China’s pollution level.

To worsen the scenario there has been a mammoth increases in the population of the country. This coupled with the lowered grain production due to pollution in China is severely straining the country’s resources.

Air pollution comprises of particulate matter suspended in the air which includes water, gas and aerosol both manmade and natural and it does have an impact on the rainfall patterns. However, researchers wanted to emphatically determine if environmental pollution in China was also the cause for the shift in the rain fall pattern of the region. Rainfall trends from 1956 to 2005 were used to conclude that there was indeed a reduction in the amount of light rain fall over the past 50 years.

The research team went a step further and probed the causative factors that led to the reduction in rainfall and it was found that there was no significant difference in the amount of water vapor in the air. This compelled researchers to focus their attention on aerosol in the China pollution and the possible role that it may play in reducing rainfall. It was found that aerosol attracts water vapor turning larger drops of water into smaller droplets. So the number of droplets increased substantially with the presence of aerosol but this also meant a decrease in size, and the smaller droplets could not form rain clouds.

When the cloud and rain drops from polluted regions were examined it was noted that the droplets were 50 times smaller than their ideal size. The work is particularly important because it shows the effect of pollution on convective clouds.