In recent years, the plumes of smoke crawling upward from Western wildfires have trended taller, with more smoke and aerosols lofted up where they can spread farther and impact air quality over a wider area.
In recent years, the plumes of smoke crawling upward from Western wildfires have trended taller, with more smoke and aerosols lofted up where they can spread farther and impact air quality over a wider area. The likely cause is climate change, with decreased precipitation and increased aridity in the Western U.S. that intensifies wildfire activity.
“Should these trends persist into the future,” says Kai Wilmot, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, “it would suggest that enhanced Western U.S. wildfire activity will likely correspond to increasingly frequent degradation of air quality at local to continental scales.”
The study is published in Scientific Reports and supported by the iNterdisciplinary EXchange for Utah Science, or NEXUS, at the University of Utah.
Read more at: University of Utah
Smoke columns and flammagenitus clouds from the Pine Gulch fire in Colorado in 2020. (Photo Credit: Jim Caldwell, Bureau of Land Management)
