Fog Research in China: An Overview

Fog can adversely affect human activity directly and indirectly, resulting in large losses both in terms of the local economy and lives. Much effort has been devoted to studies of fog across many areas of China, and in that context this paper aims to summarize climatic characteristics and review fog field experiments and their major results relating to fog mechanisms, physical properties and chemical characteristics. Progress in the application of remote sensing techniques and numerical simulation in fog research are also discussed. In particular, the effects of urbanization and industrialization on fog are highlighted. To end, perspectives on future fog research are outlined. The goal of this review paper is to introduce fog research in China to the global academic community and thus promote international collaboration on fog research. This is important because most papers on fog in China are published in Chinese, which are unreadable for the vast majority of non-Chinese researchers.