The Legislative Analysts Office warned the California legislature that one of the first orders of business should be planning how to mitigate climate change impacts on humans, particularly wildfire smoke.
Due to a rapidly heating world from the human-caused greenhouse gas crisis we pump into the atmosphere, wildfire smoke is blanketing the Pacific Northwest. Wildfires can start with lightning strikes ( which have become more frequent in recent decades due to global warming) or disturbed teenagers setting their neighborhoods on fire.
The western United States is in a significant drought, and dry vegetation is a tinderbox waiting to ignite. Fire is a natural phenomenon that burns dry leaves and branches while returning nutrients to the soil. Some species require fire to release seeds so they can sprout. Contrary to what the buffoon said about raking the forests in California, fire management policies have over the past century, fire management policies have shifted from complete fire suppression to controlled burns.
Sadly, while more innovative techniques to control wildfires have increased, they have come in conflict with climate change's threat multiplier. Throughout the world, prolonged drought and record-high temperatures mean that the resulting desiccated forest debris drives some of the most intense wildfires in human history, incinerating forests, grasslands, and communities.
The Sacramento Bee writes on what I like to call planetary hospice care. California is a wealthy state, and it can manage and implement the recommendations of the Legislative Analysts Office. South America and Siberia, not so much.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises lawmakers on fiscal and policy matters, suggested they consider more support for research, money to purchase air purifiers for people in need, and stepped-up efforts to improve public awareness of smoky skies.
The report reiterated the negative health consequences of wildfire smoke, which carries small particles that can travel deep into lungs. That makes residents with respiratory conditions and pregnant women and their fetuses especially vulnerable to its effects.
It also noted that Californians with lower incomes are more likely to live in draftier homes, exposing them to greater amounts of smoke. They are also less likely to have money for supplies, like air filters, to protect themselves.
The EPA writes on the health effects of wildfire smoke. The short version; smoke deprives you of oxygen.
Although particle pollution is a principal public health threat from short-and longer-term exposure to wildfire smoke, it is important to keep in mind that wildfire smoke is a complex mixture that consists of other pollutants that have also been shown to lead to a variety of health effects. The health effects of particle pollution exposure can range from relatively minor (e.g., eye and respiratory tract irritation) to more serious health effects (e.g., exacerbation of asthma and heart failure, and premature death).
Fine particles are respiratory irritants, and exposures to high concentrations can cause persistent coughing, phlegm, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. Even in healthy people, exposures to fine particles can potentially lead to transient reductions in lung function, and pulmonary inflammation.
Particle pollution may also affect the body’s ability to remove inhaled foreign materials, such as viruses and bacteria, from the lungs. Short-term exposures (i.e., days to weeks) to fine particles are associated with increased risk of exacerbation of pre-existing respiratory and cardiovascular disease, as well as premature mortality (U.S. EPA, 2009).
From NASA's Langley Research Center on how wildfire smoke interferes with the planetary radiation balance.
“Most of the brown carbon released into the air stays in the lower atmosphere, but we found that a fraction of it does get up into the upper atmosphere, where it has a disproportionately large effect on the planetary radiation balance — much stronger than if it was all at the surface,” said Rodney Weber, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences.
The research used air samples collected during two airborne science missions supported by researchers from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia — the 2012 Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) mission and 2013 Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) mission. DC3 made observations in the central U.S. and SEAC4RS covered parts of the southeast and western U.S.
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While black carbon can be seen in the dark smoke plumes rising above burning fossil or biomass fuels at high temperature, brown carbon is produced from the incomplete combustion that occurs when grasses, wood or other biological matter smolders, as is typical for wildfires. As particulate matter in the atmosphere, both can interfere with solar radiation by absorbing and scattering the sun’s rays.
We can't forget the world's air conditioners and how the smoke speeds up glacial melting.
Over the last 50 years, the icy north has been warming at three times the rate of the rest of the planet.
The main factor driving this difference is what's termed Arctic amplification.
What happens is that the ice and snow on the surface of the Arctic waters normally reflects most sunlight back to space, but as the ice melts the darker waters absorb much more heat, which in turn melts the ice even quicker.
But as wildfires in mid and northern latitudes have increased as the world warms, this new study finds that brown carbon from this source is having an increasing impact in the Arctic.
This is what scientists describe as a feedback loop, where the warmer world causes more fires, which in turn leads to less ice and more heat.
Lastly, our grief; from Wired.
“It shifts from grief over what's happening with our climate—can we feel safe in our own communities?—to despair, the differentiator being that you don't feel like tomorrow is going to be any better than today,” Heinz adds. “That's where it gets really dark.”
For the people of Northern California, an exhausting parade of massive wildfires have marched across the landscape over the past several autumns, with many people having to evacuate several years in a row. Last October, the Kincade Fire burned 120 square miles. The November before, the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 86 people. And in October 2017, the Tubbs Fire obliterated 5,600 structures and killed 22.
“The catchphrase—kind of with a bitterness around here—is, ‘This is the new normal,’” says Barbara Young, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Healdsburg, north of San Francisco, who had to evacuate last month. “And so with that, I think it’s implied that this isn't going away—our climate is changing. These aren't flukes, this is the trend. And I think everyone is very clear that this is not a one-off. This is every year now.”
