China is notorious for its heavy smog. "It’s incredibly bad." Denise Mauzerall, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton. "The air pollution in eastern China can be so bad you can’t clearly see across the street. It can feel like you’re walking through a heavy fog that’s burning your lungs."
中国的雾霾非常严重。“情况非常糟糕。”普林斯顿大学的气象科学家丹妮斯.莫泽罗尔是说到。“中国东部地区的空气污染非常严重，你几乎看不清街对面的`情况。感觉像在浓雾中行走，而这种浓雾会灼烧你的肺部。”
But smog has other damaging effects too. Mauzerall and her team have found that in winter months the smog in China’s northeastern provinces is so severe it blocks more than 20 percent of sunlight from reaching the region’s solar panels.
雾霾还有其他危害。莫泽罗尔和团队发现，中国东北部省份在冬季遭遇的雾霾非常严重，以致该地区太阳能板接收到的太阳光减少了20%。
The findings, based on satellite data and photovoltaic performance models, are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
这一研究结果基于卫星数据以及光伏性能模型得出，结果发表在《美国国家科学学院院刊》上。
One solution to the problem might be installing even more solar. "There’s this virtuous cycle—whereas if you use more solar electricity, you can reduce your use of coal. And that will reduce the air pollution levels, and that will then allow you to generate more solar electricity."
其中一个解决方案是安装更多的太阳能。“这是良性循环，如果使用更多的太阳能电力，那就可以减少煤的使用量。这就会减少空气污染的程度，进而产生更多太阳能电力。”
China hopes to harvest 10 percent of its electricity from solar by 2030. They’ll need 400 gigawatts, or about 10 times what we have installed in the U.S. today. It’s an optimistic forecast for solar… and hopefully, for China’s air quality, too.
中国希望在2030年可以利用太阳能生成10%的电力。这需要4000亿瓦特，约是现在美国安装的10倍。这是对太阳能的乐观估计，当然中国的空气状况也会日益改善。
