{"id":17293,"date":"2020-01-22T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=17293"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:12:04","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:12:04","slug":"air-pollution-in-new-york-city-linked-to-wildfires-hundreds-of-miles-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/air-pollution-in-new-york-city-linked-to-wildfires-hundreds-of-miles-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Air pollution in New York City linked to wildfires hundreds of miles away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Flames rise from an experimental forest fire in Canada\u2019s remote Northwest Territories.
Credit: Stefan Doerr via Immage <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A\u00a0new study<\/a>\u00a0shows that air pollutants from the smoke of fires from as far as Canada and the southeastern U.S. traveled hundreds of miles and several days to reach Connecticut and New York City, where it caused significant increases in pollution concentrations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the study, published 21 January in\u00a0the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal\u00a0Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, researchers in the lab of Drew Gentner,\u00a0associate professor of chemical & environmental engineering,\u00a0monitored the air quality at the Yale Coastal Field Station in Guilford, CT and four other sites in the New York metropolitan area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August of 2018, they observed two spikes in the presence of air pollutants – both coinciding with New York-area air quality advisories for ozone. The pollutants were the kind found in the smoke of wildfires and controlled agricultural burning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Backward-trajectory model of air that arrived at the Long Island Sound on August 16-17, 2018 . Each line represents the backward-trajectory for an air parcel arriving every three hours throughout the course of the day. The location of fires on August 9 (when most trajectories intersect the wildfire zone on the West Coast) is depicted with red triangles.
Credit: Rogers et al., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Using three types of evidence – data from the observation sites, smoke maps from satellite imagery, and backtracking 3-D models of air parcels (both the maps and models were produced by the\u00a0National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) – the researchers traced the pollutants\u2019 origin in the first event to fires on the western coast of Canada, and in the second event to the southeastern U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biomass burning, which occurs on a large scale during wildfires and some controlled burns, is a major source of air pollutants that impact air quality, human health, and climate. These events release numerous gases into the atmosphere and produce particulate matter (PM), including black carbon (BC) and other primary organic aerosols (POA) with a diameter of less than 2.5\u00a0micrometers. Known as PM2.5, it has been shown to have particularly serious health effects when inhaled.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While more reactive components are often chemically transformed closer to their place of origin, PM2.5\u00a0tends to last longer. In the case of this study, that allowed much of it to travel from the fires to the monitoring sites – a period ranging from a few days to about a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGiven the sensitivity of people to the health effects emerging from exposure to PM2.5, this is certainly something that needs to be considered as policy-makers put together long-term air quality management plans,\u201d Gentner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impacts of wildfire smoke will likely become increasingly important in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Satellite-based smoke maps (NOAA). Colors indicate the intensity of the smoke plume, with red being the most dense and green the least dense. Insets provide a magnified regional view.
Credit: Rogers et al., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people are making predictions about climate change, they\u2019re predicting increases in wildfires, so this sort of pollution is likely going to become more common,\u201d said lead author Haley Rogers \u201819, who was an undergraduate student when the study was conducted. \u201cSo when people are planning for air pollution and health impacts, you can\u2019t just address local sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the levels of the PM2.5\u00a0decreased over time and distance, co-author Jenna Ditto, a graduate student in Gentner\u2019s lab, noted that awareness of its presence in the atmosphere is critical to public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u201cStudies indicate that there are no safe levels of PM2.5, so typically any level of it is worth taking a look at,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0new study\u00a0shows that air pollutants from the smoke of fires from as far as Canada and the southeastern U.S. traveled hundreds of miles and several days to reach Connecticut and New York City, where it caused significant increases in pollution concentrations.\u00a0 For the study, published 21 January in\u00a0the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal\u00a0Atmospheric Chemistry and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",1280,748,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-300x175.jpg",300,175,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-768x449.jpg",750,438,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-1024x598.jpg",750,438,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",1280,748,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",1280,748,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",1200,701,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",870,508,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",600,351,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",600,351,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",640,374,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",96,56,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/wildfire_imaggeo.jpg__1280x99999_q90_subject_location-19301297_subsampling-2.jpg",150,88,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Environment<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}