Chinese scientists have discovered that smog can indirectly reduce water pollution.

Chen Fahu, research director of Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems at Lanzhou University, discovered that a high level of man-made aerosol - a colloid of particles or droplets in the air, such as smog - has weakened the summer monsoons in the Chinese Loess Plateau, an elevated region in Northwest China famed for its mineral-rich, but highly eroded, soil.

The weakened monsoons have led to less rainfall in the region and therefore less soil has been washed into the mountain lakes and rivers, reducing eutrophication - a form of water pollution in which excessive nutrients, mainly phosphates and nitrogen, cause algal blooms - according to Chen's published findings in Nature Climate Change, an international science journal, earlier this month.