Smoke from forest fires might contribute to more than half of certain gritty air pollution events in the continental U.S. during the summer, and as much as 20 percent of those events throughout the year, according to new research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
This research could be a step toward developing tools to warn of possible smoke-related pollution events and a better understanding of the potential health effects of smoke from planned and controlled forest burning.
"You could use something like this as a way to determine whether a particular planned burn is going to be a tipping point in going over the pollution limit downwind and whether you should burn that day," says Aaron Kaulfus, a graduate student in UAH's Department of Atmospheric Science.
Kaulfus and Dr. Udaysankar Nair, an associate professor of atmospheric science at UAH, used data collected by a pair of instruments on NOAA and NASA satellites to track both hot spots that indicate forest fires and the smoke plumes from those fires. They combined that with data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on surface sites where air pollution exceeded the safe limit of particles no more than 2.5 microns in size.
Continue reading at University of Alabama Huntsville
Image via University of Alabama Huntsville
