ORANGE ALERT

Those waking up in China’s northern provinces on March 15 would have been forgiven for thinking they’d been transported to a completely different planet. Their cities were engulfed in thick orange smog, the likes of which had not been seen for a decade.

Brought on by severe sandstorms from neighboring Mongolia, according to the National Meteorological Center, the epic storms brought traffic, flights and even schools to a close as people tried to deal with the hazardous conditions.

In downtown Beijing, the average concentration of dangerous airborne PM10 particles, fine particles with a diameter of 10 micrometers, topped 8,000 micrograms per cubic meter, far above