Air Quality Research Center

A recent article by EOS writer Jackie Rocheleau highlights a growing concern about wildfire smoke and other pollutants that continue to exist in a diluted quantity within our atmosphere. With wildfires growing in size and quantity due to climate change, the original idea that simply waiting for the pollutants to disperse would be enough to protect human health, is coming into question. 

by Andy Fell | Oct 11, 2021 | Environment, Features, The Big Question

Air Quality Research Center's, Sean Raffuse has been working on a team at NASA developing smoke and fire models. A recently published article quoted below shares his work over the past few years.  

Year after year California has seen some of the largest and most deadly wildfires, not only by acreage burned, but by also by hazardous air quality. The smoke has turned some cities in neighboring state’s air quality into the dirties in the world, including outside of the state.

By Susan O’Neill and Sean Raffuse

Originally posted in EOS on 26 February 2021: https://eos.org/science-updates/advances-in-satellite-data-for-wildfire-smoke-forecasting 

Over 111 million metric tons of CO2 were emitted by wildfires in California for the 2020 year. The transportation sector is the only area to have emitted more carbon dioxide at over 169 million metric tons. While from the outset, that looks pretty bad, you may still wonder, "In actuality, how bad is the wildfire smoke for Climate Change?"

In an interview with the SF Chronical, AQRC Director, Tony Wexler, stated that the wildfire carbon emissions are of almost no concern for him in relation to climate change.

The New York Times writer, Nadja Popovich, reports that after nearly a decade of improving the air quality nationally, the US EPA's data shows that PM 2.5 has increased in the past two years. This 180 turn of progress has been identified as likely primarily coming from increases in driving and the burning of natural gas. However, in the West, wildfires has been a large cause of the increase as well. Researchers suggest that due to a decrease of enforcement of the Clean Air Act, less businesses are concerned with their pollution.