Yellow

Yellow /ˈjɛloʊ/ is the color of gold, butter, and ripe lemons. In the spectrum of visible light, and in the traditional color wheel used by painters, yellow is found between green and orange. It is a primary color in subtractive color, used in color printing, along with cyan, magenta, and black.

According to surveys in Europe, Canada and the United States, yellow is the color people most often associate with amusement, optimism, gentleness, and spontaneity, but also with duplicity, envy, jealousy, avarice, and, in the U.S., with cowardice. It plays an important role in Asian culture, particularly in China, where it is seen as the color of happiness, glory, wisdom, harmony and culture.

Etymology and definitions

The word yellow comes from the Old English geolu, geolwe (oblique case), meaning "yellow, yellowish", derived from the Proto-Germanic word gelwaz "yellow". It has the same Indo-European base, gʰel-, as the word yell; gʰel- means both bright and gleaming, and to cry out. Yellow is a color which cries out for attention.

Asian Dust

Asian Dust (also yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow wind or China dust storms) is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the months of spring. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia, northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. These clouds are then carried eastward by prevailing winds and pass over China, North and South Korea, and Japan, as well as parts of the Russian Far East. Sometimes, the airborne particulates are carried much further, in significant concentrations which affect air quality as far east as the United States.

In the last decade or so, it has become a serious problem due to the increase of industrial pollutants contained in the dust and intensified desertification in China causing longer and more frequent occurrences, as well as in the last few decades when the Aral Sea of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan started drying up due to the diversion of the Amu River and Syr River following a Soviet agricultural program to irrigate Central Asian deserts, mainly for cotton plantations.