Tag: Canadian Wildfires

Climate Change Strikes Home for Me as Smoke from Canadian Wildfires causes the worst Air Quality ever seen in Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic region in General.

As I have mentioned on occasion in these posts I live in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the eastern United States. I consider that to be rather fortunate due to the growing problems caused by Global Warming. It’s true that here in Philly our summers are getting a bit hotter and dryer but the most noticeable change in our weather has been the milder winters, which I’m not going to complain about.

Thanks to Global Warming Philadelphia had no measurable snow this past winter so none of this for me!!!! (Credit: MPR News)

In Philadelphia we don’t have to worry about the increasing threat of hurricanes like the people in Miami or New Orleans do. Nor have we been subjected to the ever greater number of tornadoes like the people living in the Great Plains or Deep South have had to. And while each of the past few summers have been quite dry, we are in a slight drought situation right now, it’s nothing like out west where rivers and reservoirs are at historic lows and water shortages are starting to impact everyday life for millions of people. No, all in all Philadelphia has been lucky, the weather here has hardly been showing the effects of global warming.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic region we don’t get Hurricanes either. So far for us, climate change has had few harmful effects. (Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

That was until the second week of June this year. It actually started a couple of weeks earlier when we began hearing about the huge number of wildfires burning in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and especially Alberta, I even mentioned them in my post of 10 June 2023. Over a million acres of trees were consumed and the amount of smoke produced so massive that it traveled for over a thousand kilometers, a small amount even reaching the US east coast giving Philadelphia a few days of beautiful red sunsets.

Beautiful red sunset on the 10th of June. Beautiful that is until you consider the millions of trees in Alberta that were burning in Alberta to cause this in Philadelphia. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Before the fires out west could begin to quiet down more wildfires started burning in the northern part of Quebec, as many as 65 separate fires destroying as much as another two million acres of forest. Meanwhile, as the fires burned up north, the Mid-Atlantic region of the US was experiencing an unusual weather condition known as an Omega block, so named because the way that the jet stream flowing across the US resembles the Greek letter omega (Ω).

The Omega block weather pattern used to be a fairly rare phenomenon but thanks to climate change it’s becoming more common. (Credit: The Weather Channel)

During an omega block two separate low pressure systems set up. One in the northwest region of the US while the other is in New England and the maritime provinces of Canada. In the middle between two low pressure systems a massive high pressure system stretches from Texas all the way up to Minnesota. Although unusual once set up an omega block can last several weeks or more, this year’s lasted though most of the month of May and into June. Here in the Mid-Atlantic the counterclockwise flow around the low pressure system to the northeast coupled with the clockwise flow around high pressure system to the west to funnel cool air down from Canada giving Philadelphia the nicest spring we’ve had in many years.

During May that Omega black brought some really nice spring weather to Philadelphia, but every silver lining has a cloud around it! (Credit: Venture Philly Group)

Until the 6th of June that is, because the omega block began bringing down the huge amounts of smoke generated by the Canadian wildfires. It was on the evening of the 6th that a distinct smell of smoke could be noticed in the air and the weather forecasts were predicting that things were going to get worse, much worse over the next few days.

In June the wildfires in Canada spread to Quebec sending massive amounts of smoke at Pennsylvania and New York. (Credit: The BBC)

Despite the fact that the night was quite cool and promised to be perfect sleeping weather we decided to close up our house and turn on the AC so as to keep the smoke outside. The next day the smell was everywhere and Philadelphia got its first air quality alert, code orange. By the evening of the 7th the air was quite thick and everything looked as if it were in a fog except that the air was very dry.

On the afternoon of the 6th you could begin to smell the smoke but the air was still fairly clear (left). On the 8th the smoke was so thick the city itself seemed to disappear. (Credit: WHYY)

The worst day of all was Thursday the 8th of June as the air quality was declared hazardous and everyone in the city was urged to stay indoors. In the early morning hours the 24-hour news channels were declaring that New York City had the third worst air quality of any large city on Earth but by lunch NYC was officially the worst. Around three P.M. it was Philadelphia’s turn as the worst in the world as the air outside turned a dull, rusty orange and visibility dropped below a kilometer.

The pale sun in the middle of the afternoon on the 8th. The air was so thick I could only stay outside for a minute to take a few pictures. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

As the afternoon news came on the meteorologists, reporters and anchors all stared dumbfounded at the cameras as they described the conditions in the city. In a return to the days of the Covid pandemic the outside reporters were all wearing masks to protect themselves from breathing in the noxious smoke. Those meteorologists and anchors who had lived in Philadelphia for decades could only repeat, “this kind of thing doesn’t happen here!”

The worst air quality in Philly history had our local meteorologists proclaiming, “This sort of thing doesn’t happen here!” (Credit: WPVI)

Time for a little science, this is a science blog after all. Solid particles floating in the air are obviously a nuisance and can easily cause breathing problems especially for anyone who has problems breathing to start. Particulate Matter (PM) as it’s known is classified by its size because different sized particles have different characteristics in the air and in our bodies when we breathe them in.

Different classes of Particulate Matter (PM) are based on size. Big particles like sand grain are bigger than PM10, Dust and mold are PM10 while fine smoke particles are PM2.5. These particles are so small they can get deep into your lungs and stay there. (Credit: Environmental Protection Agency)

We all know how a strong wind can blow sand particles into the air and in desert regions of the world sand storms can even be deadly. At a size of around 10 micrometers sand particles along with dust, pollen and mold particles are designated as PM10. These particles are so large and heavy that they cannot stay in the air for long without a strong wind and at 10 micrometers in size they cannot penetrate deep into our lungs.

Dust storms can be very hazardous but because of the large size of the particles they require strong winds and don’t last long. (Credit: Windy.app)

Smoke particles on the other hand, like those brought down from the Canadian wildfires, are classified as PM2.5 meaning that they are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Such small particles can remain suspended in the air for days or even weeks and can travel on the winds for thousands of kilometers before finally falling to the ground. Even worse, PM2.5 particles are so small that they can get deep into a person’s lungs and remain there. Breathing air heavy in PM2.5 is very much like smoking a cigarette, and the long term effects on our health very similar.

Smoke particles however are so small that they can stay aloft for days and travel thousands of kilometers, all the way from northern Quebec to the Delaware valley. (Credit: Washington Post)

Get used to hearing the phrase PM2.5 because not only is more and more of such pollution being produced by the ever growing number of wildfires but the exhaust generated by burning fossil fuels also produces PM2.5. Indeed as the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere grows so does the amount of PM2.5 and it’s becoming an ever larger problem in cities with a lot of smog days like Delhi and Beijing.

Philly may have had bad air quality for one day but for cities like Delhi (above) dangerous air quality can go on for weeks and happen dozens of times a year. (Credit: Brooking Institute)

Philadelphia never used to have such smog problems but the climate is changing and long term models show that the conditions that caused the smog on June the 8th are likely to reoccur with increasing frequency. The air quality alerts of June 6-8 are just one more example of how fossil fuels are making every part of our planet a much less healthy place to live. 

As our Planet continues to get hotter so is the rhetoric of Climate Change deniers who are now insulting and even threatening scientists on social media.

The evidence for climate change just keeps piling up. High temperature records are being set on an almost daily basis. Severe storms seem to be ravaging half of the world while the other half is suffering from drought. The weather on planet Earth is simply becoming more extreme with each passing year.

The wildfires ravaging Canada right now are only the latest sign of our environment going out of wack. More and more of the news is being devoted to climate change but is anybody paying attention? (Credit: ABC)

To give a few details, in early May Southeast Asia endured a weeklong heat wave that broke the all time temperature records of three countries. In the northern Tuong Duong district of Vietnam the temperature reached 44.2ºC, the hottest temperature ever recorded in that country. Just next door in Laos the city of Loang Prabang saw a temperature of 43.5ºC again surpassing that nation’s previous all time record of 42.7ºC, a record that had been set only a month before. Finally the capital of Thailand, Bangkok saw its highest ever recorded temperature of 41ºC. Millions of human beings, many living in third world conditions suffered through greater heat than they had ever experienced and remember, deaths due to overheating exceed all other weather related deaths combined.

This year has been a record setter for high temperatures throughout all of SE Asia. (Credit: Living ASEAN)

Here in North America a similar scenario is occurring in the Pacific Northwest stretching from the states of Oregon and Washington up through the Canadian province of Alberta. While not as extreme as the heat wave in Southeast Asia daily records in many cities and towns were broken with the temperature on the 13th of May in Seattle reaching 32.2ºC, a new record for that day and the hottest temperature ever that early in the year.

The heat wave in the Pacific NW hasn’t been setting all-time records, just daily ones! (Credit: Fox 13 Seattle)

Of greater concern is the effect the heat wave had on the dozens of wildfires burning in Alberta, fires that had already destroyed more than a million and a quarter acres of forest before the heat wave arrived. It almost seems as though the devastating wildfires that torched the western states of the US over the last decade are now moving north into western Canada, exactly what you would expect due to global warming.

And if thinking of escaping global warming by moving up to Canada think again, the province of Alberta is basically on fire. (Credit: St. Albert Gazette)

By the way a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters concludes that more than a third, 37% of all of the forest land burned by wildfires in western North America since 1986, that’s a total of 19.8 million acres, is due to the burning of fossil fuels. The study was carried out by comparing the real life data of wildfires to an idealized model of fires in a world without fossil fuel emissions.

The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists details just now the amount of forest being destroyed by wildfires continues to grow decade by decade. (Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)

Those are just two snapshots out of many extreme weather events already this year. I could have discussed all of the tornadoes across the south and central US so far in 2023. Or I could have discussed the continuing drought in Spain and France, even war torn Ukraine has seen an unusually early spring thaw that has allowed the fighting there to intensify.

Every cloud has a silver lining. If droughts like the one in France continue we won’t have to build so many bridges! (Credit: Forbes)

With all of the extreme weather events occurring across the world you’d think that the debate over climate change would be over by now. You’d think that any sensible person would see that things are getting bad and are going to get much worse if we don’t deal with the problem of CO2 emissions. But in fact the fight over global warming is actually getting even uglier. 

I was quite surprised to discover that the US is not the world leader in Climate Change denialism. We’re #2 but I know if we put some effort into it we can take the top spot. C’mon America! (Credit: Statista)

A big change for the worst has recently taken place since Elon Musk took over control of twitter. Musk’s firm commitment to ‘Free Speech’, any kind of speech, has opened the door to vicious attacks on climate scientists. On top of that Musk also laid off nearly half of Twitter’s work force including most of those assigned to finding and eliminating hate speech from the platform.

One think ya gotta say about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it hasn’t been boring. (Credit: CNBC)

The result has been a enormous increase in misinformation about climate change as well as outright threats on Twitter against climate scientists. According to Professor of Earth Science Mark Maslin at University College London, who is also the author of popular books on climate change such as ‘How to Save Our Planet’, “There’s been a massive change. I get so much abuse and rude comments now. It’s happening to all of us, but I challenge the climate deniers so I’ve been really targeted.”

Conversations with: Professor Mark Maslin – Conversations in Human Evolution
Professor Mark Maslin out where he likes to be, in the environment. (Credit: Conversations in Human Evolution)

Not all climate scientists are as feisty as Professor Maslin however. Doug McNeall is a statistician studying climate change at the MET Office Hadley Center of Exeter University who asserts that the constant abuse has become nerve wracking. “I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health.”

Typical hate message being sent to people who are only trying to learn the truth. By the way most climate scientists get paid around $100,000 dollars a year, which they’d still get even if the climate was getting better! We’d still want to know more about Earth’s climate even if there was no global warming. By the way if you want to know how much money the oil companies are making by causing climate change just keep reading. (Credit: Inside Climate News)

Many of the climate deniers even pay subscriptions to Twitter in order to get their attacks higher up in the list of replies to a scientist’s tweet. Which makes you wonder who is paying these people to be climate deniers. Perhaps worst of all however is the fact that a recent survey of 468 international climate scientists has found that one in eight female climate scientists has received online threats of sexual violence from climate deniers.

Fear of sexual violence a special kind of hell just for woman. The threat of it in a political argument is a special kind of evil. (Credit: UN Women Asia and the Pacific)

How much of this abusive climate denialism is actually being paid for by the oil and gas industry we’ll probably never know. But remember, Exxon-Mobile made a record $55.7 billion Dollars in profit last year, Shell made $39.9 billion profit while Chevron made $35.5 billion profit and poor little BP had to make do with only $27.7 billion, in profit! That’s more than enough to pay a few hundred, or a few thousand computer geeks to spread lies and distortions about what the petroleum industry is doing to our world.

So Exxon-Mobile got $11.4 billion in one quarter while the average climate scientist got around $100,000 per year. Those greedy scientists! (Credit: Statista)

The fate of our world depends on whether we listen to the climate scientists or the climate deniers. There isn’t much time left to decide.