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Comment by jakub_g | Hacker News Reader

At first sight I was thinking "Europe looks not bad in comparison with China or Middle East". But scroll back to pre-covid time (aka "winter" - jan/feb 2020) on https://maps.s5p-pal.com/:

https://imgur.com/a/Qkx0FPe

All of northern Italy is a one huge brown dot. Does someone have an explanation? I know this is very industrial region, but there are many industrial regions in Europe. What is used for heating houses in there?

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A lot of industry + a major European airport + Alps keeping clouds stuck there.

For heating nost houses use gas (rom GAZPROM or North Africa as far as I remember), wooden pellets or wood

The mountains create a sort of trap for pollution in the air I believe.

It's not really house heating fault, when the lockdown started everyone was at home and pollution actually went down; the strong winds those days certainly contributed to clean up the air too. And yes, those days was still cold, people were actually using heating.

Anyway the Pianura Padana is completely flat and surrounded by mountains east, north and south, the sea on the east doesn't help that much either with its winds. If you compare the shape of that red/black blob to a satellite image you can clearly see it traces the shapes of the mountains.

Count the fact that it's also heavily industrialized and populated and I guess you get why it's not like other industrialized regions.

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