This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Solar farms built around China's Gobi Desert could have the unexpected benefit of reducing the dust pollution reaching cities across northern China. Large arrays of solar panels can slow winds close to the ground and help stabilize the soil, making it harder for dust to be swept into the atmosphere.
Modeling by Yueting Hao of Nanjing University and colleagues suggests that expanding solar farms in line with China's 2060 carbon neutrality target could reduce average springtime concentrations of airborne particles across northern China by almost 14%. Dust storms are a major source of air pollution, releasing up to 2 billion metric tons of dust into the atmosphere globally each year. They are particularly a problem across northern China during spring.
Strong winds can pick up loose soil and mineral particles from dry, sparsely vegetated areas, carrying them hundreds of kilometers downwind. One of the most important sources is the Gobi Desert, which stretches across parts of northern China and southern Mongolia. Dust lifted from the region can be transported toward major population centers, including cities such as Beijing.
The problem is not simply one of visibility or dirty surfaces. Fine particles in the air can affect human health, while large dust events can also influence ecosystems and climate. China has made significant progress in tackling air pollution over the past decade.
Since launching its National Air Quality Action Plan in 2013, the country has sharply reduced levels of tiny airborne particles (less than 2.5 micrometers across), largely by cutting pollution from fossil fuel use. However, dust pollution has become a larger share of the remaining problem. The proportion of airborne particulate pollution made up of coarser particles (between 2.5 and 10 micrometers across) rose from around 55% in 2013 to 65% in 2023.
This makes natural dust an increasingly important obstacle to further improvements in air quality, highlighting the need for new ways to control emissions. As China has rapidly expanded its use of solar power while working toward carbon neutrality in the next three decades, it has built many of its large solar panel installations in and around desert regions. By 2020, 42 solar farms covering more than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) had been installed across the Gobi Desert.
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