China's Severe Dust Storms "Yellow Dragon"

“Between 1994 and 2000, desert lands in China grew by nearly 53,000 square kilometers (20,300 square miles) - an area more than the combined area of New Hampshire and Vermont.  In the country's driest regions, such as Inner Mongolia, drifting sands smother grasslands in scenes reminiscent of the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s in the U.S. Midwest. China...has 20% of the world's population but only 7% of the world's arable land.  China's current desertification…affects the lives of 400 million people…severe sandstorms, known as yellow dragons, frequently turn Beijing's sky yellow, blind its residents by cutting visibility to less than 90 meters, and dump as much as 30,000 tons of sand on the city.  Yellow Dragon sandstorms sometimes merge with rain clouds to inundate the city with mud.  In the last decade, Beijing has been subjected to increasingly frequent and more severe dust storms.”