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A woman wears a mask as she rides her bicycle along a street near Tiananmen Square on the third day of a “red alert” for pollution in Beijing in 2015.//AFP

Beijing, China – A thick haze has this week smothered Beijing and surrounding areas, with tens of millions of people in northern China under severe pollution warnings.

Here’s what you need to know about the smog in northern China:

– Just how bad is it? –

China’s weather office has said “foggy and hazy” conditions are prevalent in the capital Beijing, the megacity of Tianjin, and parts of the provinces of Hebei, Shandong and Hubei, home to more than 100 million people in total.

Many of Beijing’s 22 million residents donned face masks on Wednesday morning as they snaked through streets shrouded in a grey haze.

The pollution in some areas has been classified as “severe” and has at times lowered visibility…