Very unusually polluted day today in Dali with a lot of people blaming construction and renovations for all the dust in the air .... But I would like to blame a unusual south east wind.... Generally it is from the north or west.

I believe it is a combination of the factors.

I saw parts of Kunming were over 170 yesterday, and that was out on XiShan away from the centre.

For Dali it's the beginning of the end. So much for "environmental refugees."

I just moved to Kunming and looked at the AQI a few days ago. I think yesterday morning it was over 200.

Question 1 : does anyone have a 2014 graph of the levels? I'm hoping it will get better towards the summer.

Now the AQI is around 160. I think I'll go out and buy a mask and wear it outside always. I thought I remembered when I last checked a long while ago it hovered around 70 and I thought that was high.

Question 2 : the AQI website only recommends wearing a mask outside, but if the levels outside are 200, what would they be inside on the second floor with the window very slightly open?

Was in Dali last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and air was not so good compared to what i remember. So many more cars and congestion both in old town and new Dali. Farmers were doing a lot of burning of fields which i am sure contributed to haze.
Off topic: Return expressway from Dali to Kunming is closed for construction. You end up taking old highway through mountains which takes 3 hours for first 50KM with all the trucks having great difficulty on the grades. Entire trip took over 6 hours to get back to Kunming from Dali.

Good observation. Your memory isn't getting hazy. The traffic sucks and the air has turned to shit.

There are rumours of a massive forest fire in Myanmar, but who knows what's really going on.

same thing every spring: farmers burning rice stalks on their fields. It really is a bad practice, as valuable biomass is lost, not to mention the organic carbon that is now released into the air, contributing to pollution and climate change.

I was told it should be relatively easy AND beneficial for farmers to drive their tractors across their fields with a plough, effectively putting the stalks back into the ground where they form a fertile layer for new plants to grow.

But someone will have to go tell them and organize the purchase of a communal plough/tractor for those who can't afford it.

Stuck indoors. Good time to watch Under The Dome.

Chinese subtitled. video.caixin.com/2015-02-28/100786689.html
English subtitled. vpn needed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM

Burning stubble is not a simple issue. In fact some farmers in the UK have started a campaign to allow stubble burning again, it was banned in the 1990s.

Good reasons for stubble burning include, killing insect and slug pests without the use of pesticides, killing off herbicide resistant weeds. These result in less use of agrochemicals. Benefit for the farmer is that it is cheap.
The downside is pollution from the smoke.
Burning stubble is not considered to add to climate change as the CO2 given off through burning is only marginally more than the CO2 given off by decomposition.

Investing in agricultural machinery is generally not seen as a good idea in any development programme. The capital expense of buying the tractor is easy to achieve, but the running and maintenance costs are high, esp where there is no existing maintenance infrastructure.

It's not a simple issue, which is why the government never talks about it (and why common people aren't aware of it). They don't want to incite a peasant revolt by robbing farmers of their ability to make a living. I think some things are being done to solve the issue. Out east things are moving towards large scale farming. That would probably help improve the air quality, but of course will lower the quality of produce. It seems you just can't win.