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LIKE everything else done for the Olympics, China's quest to clear up notoriously polluted skies in time for opening ceremonies this week has been marked by gargantuan effort.
In what scientists are calling the single largest attempt ever made to improve air quality, scores of heavily polluting factories were shut down and some two million vehicles were pulled off roads across Beijing and a huge swath of northern China - an area roughly the size of Alaska.
During the weekend, the hazy skies finally gave way to swirling blue.
Beijing's massive experiment with controlling pollution is offering international researchers a one-of-a-kind chance to study the large-scale effort in a uniquely urban laboratory.
"It has never been done before. We've got a golden opportunity to fast-forward our research," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist from the University of California, San Diego, who is part of a multinational research project to track Beijing's pollution during and after the Olympics using unmanned drones, satellite data and ground-level readings.
He is among dozens of world-renowned scientists who are gathering in China to conduct pollution experiments.
