Great article here by Andy Revkin, giving us in depth analysis of the smoke alert in New York City and the east, and comparing it to everyday smoke in less developed countries. For us in California it's even a bit of a surprise that eastern Canada has forest fires on the level of California and British Columbia, but simple cooking fires, which Andy then gets into, unfortunately drive much of the small particle asthma in places like India and Pakistan. This piece ably connects the dots!
Open in app or online
Putting the Awful Eastern U.S. Wildifre Smoke in Perspective
The media capital of the world is freaking out over air pollution levels that are low compared to those in millions of developing-country homes
Appears that East Coast residents don’t get how bad wildfire smoke is until it happens to them. Out West this is how our summers have been for that last few years. Of course, the wind direction can change any minute. Wear masks. We know what we need to do. We need to get off fossil fuels and boost renewables.
The bottomline-- what do we do about fossil fuel capture of state and federal government?
Your substack on the very serious health effects from fine particulate pollution is excellent. Earlier in my career I did research on modeling air pollution transport and dispersion and served two terms on the Colorado Air Quality Commission.
I came to the conclusion that the National Weather Service should issue routine forecasts of AQ as is done for other weather variables. PM2.5, ozone etc are as much a weather variable as temperature, rainfall and so forth.
Anyway, here is an opinion piece I wrote for BAMS
Pielke, R.A. 1979: Air Pollution - A National Concern. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 78, 1461
Great article here by Andy Revkin, giving us in depth analysis of the smoke alert in New York City and the east, and comparing it to everyday smoke in less developed countries. For us in California it's even a bit of a surprise that eastern Canada has forest fires on the level of California and British Columbia, but simple cooking fires, which Andy then gets into, unfortunately drive much of the small particle asthma in places like India and Pakistan. This piece ably connects the dots!
Open in app or online
Putting the Awful Eastern U.S. Wildifre Smoke in Perspective
The media capital of the world is freaking out over air pollution levels that are low compared to those in millions of developing-country homes
Thanks Steve. Just trying to be sure folks who are eager to do more than just retweet keep eyes focused where the risk is greatest.
Appears that East Coast residents don’t get how bad wildfire smoke is until it happens to them. Out West this is how our summers have been for that last few years. Of course, the wind direction can change any minute. Wear masks. We know what we need to do. We need to get off fossil fuels and boost renewables.
The bottomline-- what do we do about fossil fuel capture of state and federal government?
Hi Andy
Your substack on the very serious health effects from fine particulate pollution is excellent. Earlier in my career I did research on modeling air pollution transport and dispersion and served two terms on the Colorado Air Quality Commission.
I came to the conclusion that the National Weather Service should issue routine forecasts of AQ as is done for other weather variables. PM2.5, ozone etc are as much a weather variable as temperature, rainfall and so forth.
Anyway, here is an opinion piece I wrote for BAMS
Pielke, R.A. 1979: Air Pollution - A National Concern. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 78, 1461
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/nt-5.pdf
along with examples of two blog posts I did on this subject.
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/a-excellent-seminar-at-the-university-of-colorado-at-boulder-what-goes-around-comes-around-by-gregory-r-carmichael/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/health-benefits-of-air-quality-control-should-never-be-sacrificed-by-delaying-the-clean-up-of-aerosol-emissions-for-climate-reasons/
Best Regards
Roger Sr