When people see smoke on the horizon, what do they do? Besides (hopefully) calling fire authorities, they post to social media, of course.
The fact that people reliably flock to social media to discuss smoke and fire was the inspiration for a new study by Colorado State University atmospheric scientists. Driven to innovate ways to improve the air we breathe, the scientists have shown that social media, Facebook in this case, could prove a powerful tool.
A study in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics led by research scientist Bonne Ford, who works in the lab of Associate Professor Jeff Pierce, shows striking correlation between numbers of Facebook users posting about visible smoke, and commonly used datasets for estimating harmful smoke exposure. These include satellite observations, chemical transport models and surface particulate matter measurements.
In fact, they found that Facebook did a better job pinpointing smoke exposure than satellite data, which takes pictures of smoke from above Earth.
“We have monitoring systems, but monitors can be sparse in different places,” Ford said. “In our group, we’ve been trying to combine a whole bunch of methods, models and observations to look at smoke exposure. And we thought, ‘it would be really great if people could just tell us when they are exposed to smoke. Well, what about social media?'”
The idea for the Facebook study grew out of an interdisciplinary meeting in 2015. Organized by CSU Distinguished Professor A. R. Ravishankara of the Department of Chemistry, the meeting convened regional scientists, government officials and emergency management authorities working to improve smoke monitoring.
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Image: Bonne Ford/Colorado State University
