Western U.S. wildfire smoke plumes are getting taller, researchers find
The Western wildfire smoke plumes have gotten higher in recent years, with more smoke and aerosols lofted up where they may travel further and have an influence on air quality over a larger area. Climate change is most likely to blame, since the Western United States has more aridity and less precipitation, which exacerbates wildfire activity. According to Kai Wilmot, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, "should these trends persist into the future," increased Western U.S. wildfire activity will probably coincide with more frequent air quality degradation on a local to continental scale. The iNterdisciplinary EXchange for Utah Science, or NEXUS, at the University of Utah provided funding for the study, which was published in Scientific Reports. Wilmot and U colleagues Derek Mallia, Gannet Haller, and John Lin modelled plume activity for about 4.6 million smoke plumes in the Western U.S. and Canada between 2003 and 2020...