Smoke from wildfires influences ozone pollution on a global scale

This image shows atmospheric smoke density on August 6, 2021. Credit: NOAA Global Systems Laboratory

Another record-breaking fire season across the western United States and Canada fouled skies as far downwind as Boston and New York City with wildfire smoke, visibly demonstrating the impacts that fires can have on air quality thousands of miles away. Now, new NOAA research demonstrates that the effects of fire emissions on the atmosphere are even larger and far more widespread than previously believed, and substantially contribute to one of the most common and harmful constituents of urban air pollution: ozone. 

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, relied on data collected during the 2016–2018 NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission, which used NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory to survey the most remote regions of the troposphere over the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Southern Oceans.

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