Yellow sand (黄砂) warning

[thomas]

Yesterday's and today's weather reports warned of the annual "kosa attack", the yellow sand (aka "Asian dust") stirred up by winds in the desert regions of Mongolia and China and spread over large parts of East Asia, including Japan.

Northern China hit by severe sandstorm | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

Chinese weather officials say one of the worst sandstorms in a decade is affecting the northern parts of the country and are calling on people to refrain from going out.

www3.nhk.or.jp

It seems that large portions of the dust cloud will reach Japan tonight, though Kanto will - most likely - be not affected.

Japan Meteorological Agency | Aeolian Dust Information

Website provided by the Japan Meteolorogical Agency (the national weather service of Japan)

www.data.jma.go.jp

The website of the Ministry of the Environment has more real-time info:

LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a remote sensing technology that can distinguish DSS particles that cannot be seen with the naked eye from other atmospheric pollutant particles (e.g. air pollutants) and that can monitor such particles on a real-time basis. On this page, the DSS distribution near the ground is estimated and represented as a point of colour based on the monitoring results (provisional data) of LIDAR.

DSS - Dust and Sand Storms - MOEJ Real-time DSS Information (LIDAR DSS Observation Data Page)

www2.env.go.jp