Quebec burns, and 100 million Americans discover that climate catastrophe doesn't stop at the border

Meteorologist Matthew Cappuchi shared an animated gif of a new pulse of smoke that will cover the Northeast United States with smoke from the wildfires in Quebec. The smoke in NYC and other areas will be worse than yesterday when the skies were orange from the aerosols in the smoke; He wrote on Twitter this morning:

For those of you that live in the western states and south Florida, the smell of wildfire smoke and haze is not new. But for those in the East, this is a new experience. Most people in the world don't give the worsening climate a second thought. But when it knocks on your front door, desensitization to climate disasters is harder. 

The smoke from another heat dome that formed over Quebec created hazardous health conditions for people and wildlife from western Minnesota to the Carolinas.

Entertaining company around my neck of the woods in the southern Appalachians, I took this photo yesterday at Chimney Top in the Blue Ridge Mountains. That is not water vapor from this temperate rainforest but Canadian wildfire smoke.

Air quality alerts increased across the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic, warning "sensitive individuals" that they may want to stay indoors if they are young, elderly, or have breathing and cardiac issues.

With no end in sight to the fires, the question of how long the smoke lingers comes down to wind direction.

Wednesday into Thursday, an even worse round of wildfire smoke could waft south out of Canada on the backside of a north-to-south-moving cold front. Pennsylvania, New York state and the Mid-Atlantic — including major metro areas such as Philadelphia, Newark, New York, Baltimore, Washington and Richmond — are likely to see very poor air quality. Outdoor recreation would probably be hazardous.

Winds will become more northwesterly Friday into Saturday. While that won’t fully clear the smoke, it will bring a reduction in the concentrations of fine particulate matter. Visibilities, sky conditions and air quality will improve somewhat.

Jase Bernhardt, a professor of meteorology at Hofstra University, determined that the Air Quality Index in Syracuse, N.Y., was the worst since reliable records began in 1999.

Particle pollution in Detroit and New York registered at the highest and second-highest levels, respectively, since 2006, Stanford’s Burke found.

Meanwhile, forecasters at the Weather Service in Burlington, Vt., called the smoke situation “uncharted territory,” having never dealt with it before. “[W]e are learning and adapting as the event unfolds,” they wrote in a discussion.

This tweet doesn't acknowledge the soot enveloping the Canadian Archipelago. Smoke in the Arctic darkens the ice, which absorbs more solar heat, melting the ice, drying out large swathes of the world, and setting the fuel ablaze. Wash, rinse, and repeat. What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.

Strangely enough, nearly half of the wildfires in Canada this year are burning in eastern Canada. The fires are all near the border with the United States, and "with a northerly flow in place, the smoke and haze have swirled down into the Eastern United States."

For those not on Twitter:

‘Unprecedented’ Canadian fires intensified by record heat, climate change

Persistent and often extreme warmth in the high latitudes is among the clearest signals of climate change. The Arctic and its surroundings have been found to be warming much faster than most of the planet.

Stagnant zones of high pressure, which bring prolonged periods of sunny, hot conditions, have been numerous in recent years and have again been the prevailing weather feature in 2023. An expansive zone of high pressure anchored around the Hudson Bay has frequently migrated west and east for much of this year and particularly since the spring.

During May, the strength of the high pressure in western and central Canada — based on a measure known as “500 mb heights” by meteorologists — was record-setting:

Such high-pressure zones, which climate change intensifies, not only boost temperatures and fuel fires but also strengthen drought conditions conducive to fires by drying out the land surface.