Wildfire-driven air pollution is all too familiar to residents of the Pacific Northwest and the U.S. West, where most of the continent’s large wildfires occur, but it’s less common in the eastern part of North America. So June’s headline-grabbing haze might be a wake-up call to East Coast policy makers about the hazards of climate change, some researchers hope.
Smoke from wildfires in Eastern Canada shrouded New York City and other cities along the U.S. East Coast in a thick haze of fine particles on June 7, leading to a Code Purple day indicating the air was very unhealthy.There’s plenty of historical precedent for that, says Nicholas Bond, state climatologist for the state of Washington, who is based in Seattle. “There were some periods when dust [from the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s] made it all the way to Washington, D.C.
from recent simulations of future climate and fire behavior. The current fires are not necessarily a harbinger of things to come so much as a reminder of what’s already here: They’re burning in regions that are already considered at risk of fire. Climate change is projected to boost fires across other vast swaths of boreal forest in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s already having an impact. “Wildfires in the boreal forests of Alaska burned more acres in the past 20 years” than in the previous 20 years, Bond says. How much of the forest is on fire can vary significantly from year to year; 2020 was below-average, with about 73,000 hectares burned.
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