Along with Beijing and the northern port city of Tianjin, parts of Inner Mongolia as well as Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Hebei provinces will be hit by gale-force winds and sand, the office said on its website.

The central and western parts of Inner Mongolia will be particularly hard hit, with visibility of less then 1,000 meters (yards), it said.

"Please take the necessary precautions for the sandy weather's negative impact on transport and everyday living," the office warned.

The coming sandstorm will be the 11th to sweep across northern China this year, said the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Millions of Beijing residents woke up Monday to find their city covered in a thin layer of grit.

Despite the more frequent sandstorms, the Chinese government has insisted that it will intensify its efforts to clean the air and prepare for the 2008 Olympics by planting broad belts of trees around the city.

Desertification is a worrying trend for China, which has around 1.74 million square kilometers (696,000 square miles) of desertified land, or 18 percent of its total land area.

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