Canadian wildfire smoke ... a sniff from the past

Seems more like a majority of people do get it, only there's an influential-enough minority, combining people who really still don't get it and people with short-term reasons to pretend they don't get it, to still make it seem less widely got than it is.

 

Air levels of PM2.5 can be reported as "air quality index" numbers (0–50 "green", 51–100 "yellow", 101–150 "orange", 151–200 "red", 201–300 "purple", >300 "maroon"), when you see them, for example, here:

https://www.airnow.gov/

or they can be reported as micrograms per cubic meter, when you see them, for example, on the display of the little air purifier I bought (which shows 0–12 µg/m³ in white, 13–35 in blue, 35–55 in yellow, or >55 in red).

Decoder ring on page 4 here:

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-04/documents/2012_aqi_factsheet.pdf

That information should be less work to find.

On the bright side, according to the display on my little purifier, I don't seem to need the little purifier. Shows just around 2 µg/m³ indoors here, just from switching the HVAC fan to ON to keep stuff going through that filter.

Reported AQI here is around 104, which I guess would mean around 36 µg/m³ outdoors.

 

CIFFC

2023 Canada forest burn area now approaches 10.2 million hectares.

 

I'm not so sure I trust the display on the little purifier. i don't know what sort of sensor it is using.

The air had been pretty good here for a while, but got bad again yesterday. I didn't put the HVAC fan back to ON as early as I might have; I thought of it when my eyes began to hurt, here inside the house. i don't know what PM2.5 level that corresponds to. But then I turned on the little purifier as well, and it sat there cheerfully saying between 2 and 5 µg/m³. I'm skeptical.

 

Maybe it's measuring the output air.
It is also possible the eye burning isn't from physical irritation but chemical. In that case, particle size doesn't matter as long as enough of the compound dissolves into your tears.

 

it's very hazy here. idk if it is the wildfires or just humidity

 

That possibility just occurred to me today. Pretty useless design; essentially confirming that there's a filter installed in the unit, rather than whether the unit is having any beneficial effect on the space.

I guess I could now and then run it with the filter removed, and see what its meter says then.

 

2023 Canada forest burn area now 13 million hectares.

@ChapmanF the particulate sensor is probably one in Table 2 in

An Open Framework for Participatory PM2.5 Monitoring in Smart Cities | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

First listed is by Sharp, and Digikey will sell you one for $12 (not $6 as in IEEE). I always want to type more Es there.

For better accuracy, others no doubt make things with 'real' lasers and fan circulation. Did not investigate.

 

2023 Canada forest burn area now nearly 18 million hectares.

 

is it still burning? haven't smelled it in quite awhile

 

When snowfall ends this, it will be an extreme outlier in recorded Canadian fire history. But the well-quantified record is 4 decades and the sorta OK record is only about 10 decades.


It was only newsy while many fires were near US border and winds blew ill. I’m wondering about more fundamental significance. In US, one fire factor often mentioned is active suppression (about 11 decades of that) having changed forest structure to more conducive to large-scale fire spreading. This Is not the case across most of Canada’s forest (though it may be near population centers). So that isn’t why so much boreal forest burned in 2023. We cannot necessarily move that idea to US’ temperate forests, but it does rather stare one in the face.


Climate change is often invoked, and it seems to play at least a strong contributing role. But one would rather have more than 100 years of record to explore climate variability before (industrial) CO2 increases. There is way to access earlier records involving carbon-14 isotope in char buried in soils. Sparing readers the details, one digs some holes in appropriate places, float off the char (known to you as charcoal) with appropriate solvents, and measure ages with accelerator mass spectrometry. This works well back 20000 years (4 C14 half lives) and no would be feasible anyway, as there was a glacial ‘reset’ you know about. Some emails are planned.


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The other newsy aspect relates to burned out population centers at the ‘wildland interface’. It is clearly increasing in several biomes. It is a matter of choosing to live in such places, and different than what I’m discussing.

 

(Sigh) yes @bisco, it's still burning. (Sigh)

 

sorry to grieve you, but msm isn't keeping up. too bad they didn't get nyc's rain today

 

Could set your sights higher. Do not expect ad-funded media to 'teach' the world to you. It's not their business, it could be seen as yours. Do or do not.

You don't disappoint me, you inform me how normal humans interact with knowledge. I am not normal, I go 'anywhere'.

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A Chinese person related by marriage asked me if GMO crops make females sterile. No (sigh). The point is, I have no idea what people think, unless they disclose.

 

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Low amounts of sulfur in forest plants suggest not very acidic. There are other problems like carbon monoxide, and fine particulate aerosol.

ACP - Emission factors and evolution of SO2 measured from biomass burning in wildfires and agricultural fires