As Canadian wildfire smoke continues to impact large swaths of the United States, resulting in poor air quality and negative health outcomes for millions of Americans, more people than ever are feeling the effects of longer fire seasons and a changing climate.
As Canadian wildfire smoke continues to impact large swaths of the United States, resulting in poor air quality and negative health outcomes for millions of Americans, more people than ever are feeling the effects of longer fire seasons and a changing climate. Now, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered that wildfires may have even bigger climate impacts than previously thought.
In a new study published Aug. 7 in Nature Geoscience, researchers led by Rajan Chakrabarty, the Harold D. Jolley Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, found that wildfires are causing a much greater warming effect than has been accounted for by climate scientists. The work, which focuses on the role of “dark brown carbon” — an abundant but previously unknown class of particles emitted as part of wildfire smoke — highlights an urgent need to revise climate models and update approaches for the changing environment.
To conduct a comprehensive analysis of what makes up wildfire smoke plumes, Chakrabarty’s team spent 45 days traveling to different wildfire locations in the western United States, where they sampled gaseous smoke and aerosol species and analyzed their chemical and optical properties. This research was conducted as part of the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign, a joint venture led by the National Aeronatics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Read more at Washington University in St. Louis
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