BEIJING — Beijing and other parts of northern China were stung by hazardous air pollution levels Thursday as strong winds blew a sandstorm through the region.

Air in the capital turned a yellowish hue as sand from China's arid northwest blew in, turning the sky into a noxious soup of smog and dust.

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At 6 a.m. local time, the U.S. Embassy's air quality index showed a reading of 516 for particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Known as PM2.5, such particles are considered particularly dangerous because they can lodge deeply in the lungs. On the American air pollution index, the air at that time and throughout much of the morning was classified as "beyond index."

 

The developers of the U.S Embassy's air monitoring station had planned for an index capped at 500. The World Health Organization suggests that 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 should be limited to levels of 25 on that scale.

Beijing's municipal government issued a yellow-haze warning late Wednesday while state media urged citizens to stay indoors or to take precautions such as donning face masks before venturing outside.

Across northern China in provinces including Hebei, Hubei, Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia, air monitoring stations recorded readings over 500, and visibility across the region was severely curtailed. In some places visibility was below 3,200 feet, leading to highway closures, suspension of high-speed train services and the cancellation of flights from Beijing International Airport.

By mid-afternoon, pollution levels had fallen and strong winds had pushed much of the remaining cloud cover from the capital.

Geographically close to the Gobi Desert, Beijing and other northern cities are particularly susceptible to sandstorms such as Thursday's. Sandstorms are prevalent in late winter and spring as melting frost frees sand and strong winds kick it up and push it eastward.

The start of 2013 has brought chronic bad air to much of China. In January, air pollution readings were so bad that they were compared to living in an airport smoking lounge. That comparison was underscored by record high levels of PM2.5 on Jan. 12, when readings topped out at 755 on the air quality index.

Frustration over China's continued pollution problems popped up across Chinese social media. But irritation over the long-brewing issue was perhaps best summed up by a viral photo originally posted on popular Web portal QQ.com of an unhappy looking Yao Ming, grimacing at the Beijing sky.

Yao, the former NBA All-Star and current member of a Communist Party advisory board known as the China People's Political Consultative Conference, is currently in Beijing in the lead-up to next month's National People's Congress.

The congress will mark the final step in China's once-in-a-decade leadership change as party heads Xi Jinping and Le Keqiang formally take over as China's president and prime minister, respectively.

Since taking over China's ruling Communist Party late last year, the new leaders have spoken repeatedly about improving the mainland's environment.

Many China watchers believe that China's environmental degradation -- underscored by severe air pollution, contaminated soil and dirty waterways -- will be a focal point during the congress.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:46 AM EST

BEIJING — Air quality in Beijing was the "worst on record" on Saturday and Sunday, according to environmentalists, with pollution 30-45 times above the recommended safety levels.

With a thick smog wrapping the Chinese capital since Friday, the city's pollution monitoring center warned the city's 20 million residents to stay indoors.

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Data posted on Sunday by the monitoring center showed particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) had reached more than 600 micrograms per square metre at some monitoring stations in Beijing, and was as high as 900 on Saturday evening.

The recommended daily level for PM2.5 is 20, according to the World Health Organisation. Such pollution has been identified as a major cause of asthma and respiratory diseases.

"This is really the worst on record not only from the official data but also from the monitoring data from the U.S. embassy — some areas in (neighboring) Hebei province are even worst than Beijing," said Zhou Rong, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said heavy pollution had been trapped by an area of low pressure, making it harder to disperse, and the conditions were likely to last another two days.

Related: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off life span

Pollution has been identified as one of the biggest challenges facing China's leaders, with outgoing president Hu Jintao saying during his address to the Communist Party Congress last November that the country needed to "reverse the trend of ecological deterioration and build a beautiful China."

China said at the end of last year that it would begin releasing hourly pollution data for its biggest cities.

Beijing has already committed to a timetable to improve air quality in the city, and has relocated most of its heavy industry, but surrounding regions have not made the same commitments, said Zhou.

"For Beijing, cleaning up will take a whole generation but other regions don't even have any targets to cut coal burning. I bet the pollution here is mainly from those surrounding regions." 

 

Eleven killer whales that were “locked in” by ice in a Canadian bay, with only a small area of open water for them to surface, are now apparently free, possibly due to a change in current that helped break open a path to the sea, the mayor of a nearby village said Thursday.

Two scouts sent to check on the killer whales around 8 a.m. local time found a passage of water had been created in Hudson Bay all of the way to the open sea – nearly 25 miles away -- and the ice hole that the marine mammals had been trapped in was empty, said Petah Inukpuk, mayor of Inukjuak, a remote Inuit village home to 1,800, in Quebec.

“They are free. They are no longer here. When there is a new moon, the water current is activated. It could have helped … completely trap them, but in this case it caused an open passage out to the open water,” he told NBC News, adding that they probably were freed overnight. “It was mother nature that helped them. ... They are no longer icelocked.”

A hunter had found the killer whales, also known as orcas, on Tuesday morning in the bay in northeastern Canada about one mile from shore. Two of the orcas appeared to be adults; the remaining nine were smaller in size, said Inukpuk, 61. Other reports said there were 12 orcas in the pod.

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Canada's fisheries and oceans department said it received confirmation from the community "that winds and tides shifted overnight, opening the ice that had trapped the whales." Two of its scientists were en route to Inukjuak to collect scientific information and work with the community.

A video taken by villager Clement Rousseau on Tuesday revealed a tough situation facing the killer whales: the water opening appeared to be just large enough for a few of them to surface at a time. 

“They are in a confined area,” Inukpuk told NBC News on Wednesday, noting then that there was “no more open water.”

“From time to time, they are in a panic state and other times they are gone for a long period of time, probably looking for another open water (space) which they are unable to find," Inukpuk said. "They keep going back to the same spot.”

The villagers held a meeting Wednesday night and crafted a plan similar to a rescue performed in 1988 of two California gray whales that got stuck in ice in Alaska. In Operation Breakthrough, which made international headlines and inspired the 2012 film "Big Miracle," Eskimo whalers cut more than a half mile of holes for the whales to travel through on their way to open sea. Two Soviet icebreakers helped by crushing a critical thick wall of ice that blocked their path and freed the animals after 20 days, according to a story on the rescue by the Los Angeles Times.

Twenty of the Inukjuak villagers were tasked with doing much the same: they were going to remove the broken ice around the area and use chainsaws to enlargen the hole, which was getting increasingly smaller. A neighboring Inuit village had also offered a large chainsaw capable of cutting the ice. The villagers even got offers of help from far afield, including Germany and England.

"We were prepared to endure it, make their breathing hole bigger and create another breathing hole nearby. Enlarge it, going step by step," he said. "We were prepared to do that method because the closest icebreaker was ten days away … without assistance they would not have made it."

A Canadian fisheries official told CBC.ca that some icebreakers were being used in the Saint Lawrence River, where three commercial ships got stuck this week. 

Geoff Carroll, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who helped release the two California gray whales, said Operation Breakthrough showed the power of the simpler methods.

“Our experience up here was that it seemed like the local knowledge and the low-tech approaches to working with the whales were the ones that worked best,” Carroll said. “It seemed like there were lots of high-tech efforts made to get those whales out and they kind of failed one after the other. What really worked was when we got local guys with chainsaws cutting one hole after another and we could kind of walk the whales out that way.”

There have been reports of other whales getting caught in ice, but it was an anomaly for killer whales -- technically in the oceanic dolphin family -- which tend to hunt around the ice, said Deborah Giles, a graduate student researcher at the University of California, Davis, who has studied killer whales for eight years.

Giles recalled that one pod of orcas died in 2005 when they were trapped in thick ice, and Paul Wade, a research fisheries biologist at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, noted there have been some other similar cases, too.

Wade said he watched videos of the pod near Inukjuak online and thought some were engaging in normal behavior -- such as "spyhopping," when adult males shoot straight up out of the water -- while others appeared agitated. He said it looked like the pod included two adult males, several juveniles and female adults or younger adult males. The group was most likely related, said Giles.

Photoblog: Images of whales that were stuck in ice

Killer whales are highly social and typically travel in pods numbering from two to 15, though there can be larger groups, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are most numerous in colder waters, such as Antarctica, Alaska and Norway, although they can also be found in temperate and tropical waters. Different groupings have distinctive whistles and pulsed calls that are thought to be used by them to communicate.

Inukpuk said killer whales were not spotted in the area every summer, but every second or third one. However, this was the first time that they were "locked in,” he said.

“Why these whales hung around so long is a mystery,” Wade said. But he added: “Even the types of whales that live in the ice a lot or much closer to the ice more frequently than killer whales -- they make mistakes as well.”

The winter was unusual this year in that the bay did not freeze up as it normally does at the end of November or beginning of December. There was open water after Christmas but earlier this week it got "really cold," leaving just an area of water the size of a swimming pool open that was getting smaller, Inukpuk said.

"People here were very much ready to help and it is surprising because the killer whales are (our) competitors for the same species," such as seals, he said. "We were ready to give aid to make sure that they survived until help could come."

He said they were "very pleased" with the outcome and he had a wish for the pod, too: "I hope they find a good meal and they have a hearty feast because they are probably pretty hungry."

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By John Roach, NBC News

Melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland may push up global sea levels more than 3 feet by the end of this century, according to a scientific poll of experts that brings a degree of clarity to a murky and controversial slice of climate science. 

Such a rise in the seas would displace millions of people from low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, swamp atolls in the Pacific Ocean, cause dikes in Holland to fail, and cost coastal mega-cities from New York to Tokyo billions of dollars for construction of sea walls and other infrastructure to combat the tides.

"The consequences are horrible," Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the study published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change, told NBC News. 

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Estimating how much sea levels will rise from ice sheet melting is one of the more challenging aspects of climate science. Some evidence suggests recent accelerated melting is related to changes in ocean and atmospheric temperature, though natural variability may play an important role.

In addition, glaciers respond to external forces such as warmer temperatures in different ways, even when they are located right next to each other. As a result, there is tremendous uncertainty in the scientific community over how the melting will affect sea levels over the next century.

Bamber and colleague Willy Aspinall attempted to find clarity in the chaos using a scientific polling technique common in fields such as predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but until now not applied to climate science.

The pair sent 26 of the world's leading glaciologists a series of questions about the behavior of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. About half replied to the survey in 2010. The respondents were polled again in 2012 to assess the robustness of their answers.

Bamber said this type of approach is "a lot more than an opinion poll." The experts were handpicked to get a representative perspective of world leaders from the ice sheet modeling and observational fields. "We analyzed the results in a very systematic, rigorous, and statistically robust way," he added.

The median estimate from the experts is that the melting ice sheets will contribute 1 foot (29 centimeters) to sea level rise by the year 2100 with a 5 percent chance their contribution could exceed 2.8 feet (84 centimeters). When the effect of thermal expansion (water expands as it warms) is taken into account, the high-end estimate is more than 3 feet (1 meter).

The estimates are higher than the controversial figures in the 2007 report  from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of up to 23 inches (59 centimeters) and higher than the unpublished estimates being prepared for the next IPCC report, said Bamber, who is a review editor for that document and has seen the estimates.

The discrepancy likely reflects added weight given to recent studies that indicate glacier melt has accelerated in recent years in Antarctica and Greenland, and that the West Antarctic ice sheet could partially collapse by the end of this century.

"The numbers we are getting out of our elicitation reflect the fact that the world leaders in this field are now cognizant of the fact that the ice sheets are quite responsive and, in particular, there is a potential for them to make a really quite dramatic contribution," Bamber said.

The greatest drama would be a more than 3-foot rise in sea levels from the combined effect of melting ice and thermal expansion, which the study indicates has a 1 in 20 chance of occurring. 

How much of this drama can be attributed to human burning of fossil fuels, the study indicates, remains murky. “There is really no consensus amongst the experts we approached,” Bamber said. “That’s something that we in the scientific community need to address as a matter of urgency.”

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website.

A bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million at a Tokyo auction Saturday, nearly three times the previous high set last year — even as environmentalists warn that stocks of the majestic, speedy fish are being depleted worldwide amid strong demand for sushi.

In the year's first auction at Tokyo's sprawling Tsukiji fish market, the 222-kilogram (489-pound) tuna caught off northeastern Japan sold for 155.4 million yen, said Ryoji Yagi, a market official.

The fish's tender pink and red meat is prized for sushi and sashimi. The best slices of fatty bluefin — called "o-toro" here — can sell for 2,000 yen ($24) per piece at upmarket Tokyo sushi bars.

Japanese eat 80 percent of the bluefin tuna caught worldwide, and much the global catch is shipped to Japan for consumption.

The winning bidder, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., which operates the Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said "the price was a bit high," but that he wanted to "encourage Japan," according to Kyodo News agency. He was planning to serve the fish to customers later Saturday.

Kimura also set the old record of 56.4 million yen at last year's New Year's auction, which tends to attract high bids as a celebratory way to kick off the new year — or get some publicity. The high prices don't necessarily reflect exceptionally high fish quality.

PhotoBlog: Giant bluefin tuna nets $1.76 million 

The price works out to a stunning 700,000 yen per kilogram, or $3,603 per pound.

Stocks of all three bluefin species —the Pacific, Southern and Atlantic — have fallen over the past 15 years amid overfishing.

On Monday, an intergovernmental group is to release data on Pacific Bluefin stocks that environmentalists believe will likely show an alarming decline.

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"Everything we're hearing is that there's no good news for the Pacific bluefin," said Amanda Nickson, the director of the Washington-based Pew Environmental Group's global tuna conservation campaign. "We're seeing a very high value fish continue to be overfished."

The population of another species, the southern bluefin, which swims in the southern Pacific, has plunged to 3-8 percent of its original levels.

Stocks of bluefin caught in the Atlantic and Mediterranean plunged by 60 percent between 1997 and 2007 due to rampant, often illegal, overfishing and lax quotas. Although there has been some improvement in recent years, experts say the outlook for the species is still fragile.

In November, the 48 member nations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, voted to maintain strict catch limits on the species, although some countries argued for higher limits. The quota will be allowed to rise slightly from 12,900 metric tons a year to 13,500. Quotas were as high as 32,000 tons in 2006.

A total catch limit on the Pacific bluefin has been imposed only recently in the eastern part of the Pacific near the United States and Mexico, but not by the intergovernmental group that oversees the western Pacific, Nickson said. So-called effort limits in place now — restrictions on the number of vessels and days fishing allowed — are not effective, she added, and fisherman also are targeting juvenile populations and spawning grounds.

"This poor species is being hit from every angle," she said.

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West Antarctica is warming almost twice as fast as previously believed, adding to worries of a thaw that would add to sea level rise from San Francisco to Shanghai, a study showed on Sunday. 

Annual average temperatures at the Byrd research station in West Antarctica had risen 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 Farenheit) since the 1950s, one of the fastest gains on the planet and three times the global average in a changing climate, it said. 

The unexpectedly big increase adds to fears the ice sheet is vulnerable to thawing. West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise world sea levels by at least 3.3 meters (11 feet) if it ever all melted, a process that would take centuries. 

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"The western part of the ice sheet is experiencing nearly twice as much warming as previously thought," Ohio State University said in a statement of the study led by its geography professor David Bromwich. 

The warming "raises further concerns about the future contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise," it said. Higher summer temperatures raised risks of a surface melt of ice and snow even though most of Antarctica is in a year-round deep freeze. 

Low-lying nations from Bangladesh to Tuvalu are especially vulnerable to sea level rise, as are coastal cities from London to Buenos Aires. Sea levels have risen by about 20 centimeters (8 inches) in the past century. 

The United Nations panel of climate experts projects that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-24 inches) this century, and by more if a thaw of Greenland and Antarctica accelerates, due to global warming caused by human activities.

The rise in temperatures in the remote region was comparable to that on the Antarctic Peninsula to the north, which snakes up towards South America, according to the U.S.-based experts writing in the journal Nature Geoscience. 

Parts of the northern hemisphere have also warmed at similarly fast rates. 

Annual bird counts give scientists climate clues

Several ice shelves - thick ice floating on the ocean and linked to land - have collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years. Once ice shelves break up, glaciers pent up behind them can slide faster into the sea, raising water levels.

"The stakes would be much higher if a similar event occurred to an ice shelf restraining one of the enormous West Antarctic ice sheet glaciers," said Andrew Monaghan, a co-author at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. 

The Pine Island glacier off West Antarctica, for instance, brings as much water to the ocean as the Rhine river in Europe. 

The scientists said there had been one instance of a widespread surface melt of West Antarctica, in 2005. "A continued rise in summer temperatures could lead to more frequent and extensive episodes of surface melting," they wrote. 

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

West Antarctica now contributes about 0.3 mm a year to sea level rise, less than Greenland's 0.7 mm, Ohio State University said. The bigger East Antarctic ice sheet is less vulnerable to a thaw. 

Helped by computer simulations, the scientists reconstructed a record of temperatures stretching back to 1958 at Byrd, where about a third of the measurements were missing, sometimes because of power failures in the long Antarctic winters. 

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Some 1,500 African elephant tusks — the biggest seizure ever — were found this week hidden within timber planks and destined for China's ivory market. Shocked conservationists noted 2012 will now go down as the worst year in 24 years of records — and warned that 2013 could be even worse.

"In 2011 we thought the threats to elephants couldn't get any worse and 2012 draws to a close with the depressing news that the slaughter of elephants hasn't even drawn close to their zenith," said Jason Bell, who runs the International Fund for Animal Welfare's elephant program. "The illegal trade is simply voracious in its appetite for ivory."

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Hidden in 10 crates shipped in two cargo containers, the tusks were found Monday by Malaysian customs officials at the port near Kuala Lumpur. The shipment had come from Togo in West Africa.

The tusks weigh about 20 tons, nearly as much as all that was seized in 2011 — a year when an estimated 25,000 elephants were slaughtered for their tusks. For all of 2012, about 34 tons have been seized.

Ivory can fetch up to $1,000 a pound, the World Wildlife Fund said in a new report on poaching of elephants, rhinos and tigers.

"The bloody ivory trade has reached new heights of destruction and depravity in 2012," echoed Will Travers, head of Born Free USA. 

"No part of Africa is now safe," he added. "Across the continent, for the first time, the number of carcasses recorded as a result of poaching exceeds the number reportedly dying from natural causes." 

The groups worry that the start of Africa's dry season will fuel a new round of poaching in the coming weeks. Since 1979, when Africa still had an estimated 1.3 million elephants, the population has declined to an estimated 450,000 in 2007, according to the group Save the Elephants.

Some 150 armed Sudanese men were seen riding on camels and horses across the Central African Republic a few weeks ago and locals suspect they were looking for elephant herds, according to a report on nationalgeographic.com.

Conservationists fear another massacre like the one in Cameroon earlier this year when some 600 elephants inside a national park — half the local population — were killed. 

The tusks from that slaughter were never recovered, Bell noted. 

"It is an indication of an illegal industry completely out of control that lawmakers still have no idea where the massive amounts of ivory poached in Cameroon have gone," he said.

The groups urged the international community to fund a protection plan already endorsed by African nations with elephant populations.

Bell said needed actions include "swift DNA identification of seized ivory, so that we know how and where to point our efforts to prevent further poaching and close down transit routes for smuggled ivory."

Related: Religious groups rally to save elephants, rhinos

China's status as an authorized ivory trading nation is also under fire from conservationists, who want it revoked until it can prove that the only ivory traded is from legally authorized stockpiles.

Born Free, for its part, has started an online campaign at bloodyivory.org to build public pressure against China.

As for the latest seizure, Malaysian officials did not make any arrests but are investigating a local trading company involved with the shipment. It could face fines and any individuals found guilty of knowingly trading in the tusks could get up to five years in prison, customs officials said.

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