Curb falsification of weather data to tackle instances of sandstorms

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment recently held a news briefing to address public concerns over the fierce sandstorms in China's northern region in recent months and the doctoring of monitoring data by some polluting enterprises to escape fines and punishments.

Since the beginning of this year, fierce sandstorms have swept across large swathes of the northern region with greater intensity than in the past 10 years. This has adversely affected the air quality in more than 240 prefecture-level and above cities, and the number of days with good air quality in the whole year is expected to decrease by about 2.4 percentage points.

The top environmental watchdog has established a fast response mechanism for sandstorm on the basis of daily consultations on air quality monitoring and forecasts. Such targeted consultations and studies on the trend and impacts of sandstorms have helped in issuing timely warnings to the public.