Asian Pollution Travels To U.S. West Coast

"Asia's growing air pollution - billowing plumes of soot, smog and wood smoke - is making the Pacific region cloudier and stormier, disrupting winter weather patterns along the West Coast and into the Arctic [and could] spawn fiercer thunderstorms and more intense rainfall...In fact, on any spring or summer day, almost a third of the air high over Los Angeles, San Francisco and other California cities can be traced directly to Asia, researchers said...Usually, dust and industrial pollutants take from five days to two weeks to cross the Pacific to California."