A portrait from above of Shanghai’s pollution

The thickest of the gray-brown haze centers around the low-lying contours of the Yellow River Valley and the western half of the North China Plain near the Luliang Mountains.

You’ve been able to see the air for the last few days, now see what this massive Shanghai pollution cloud looks like from above.

A NASA satellite captured an image of a “massive smog bank smothering huge portions of China.” It is directly over Shanghai and is exacerbated “by cool air and smoke from fires,” says one report.

Although it's easy to blame Shanghai's pollution on the poor air quality, NASA researchers offer up other aggravating causes.

“A temperature inversion may be responsible for the build up of pollution over eastern China. Normally, air cools with altitude, but occasionally, a layer of cool air will be trapped beneath a layer of warm air. Since the cool air is more dense than the air above it, the two layers don’t mix and pollutants build up in the cool air near Earth’s surface."

Click here to get today’s Shanghai Air Pollution rating (API) and here for China's pollution map.