Alaskan and Canadian forest fires exacerbate ozone pollution over Houston, Texas, on 19 and 20 July 2004

Morris, Gary A.; Hersey, S. P.; Thompson, A. M.; Pawson, Steven; Nielsen, J. E.; Colarco, Peter R.; McMillan, W. W.; Stohl, Andreas; Turquety, Solène; Warner, J. X.; Johnson, B. J.; Kucsera, Tom; Larko, D.; Oltmans, S. J.; Witte, J. C.

doi:10.1029/2006jd007090

Cited by 148 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This may be because of over classification with the use of both primary and secondary discharge codes. However, an increase in cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalizations is consistent with the literature [8,16,24,50,66], though some literature has shown no increase in cardiovascular hospitalizations [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] or mortality [67]. Figure 4 displays the percent increase in hospital admissions for the haze period compared to the non-haze period in the affected region for all specific diagnoses of interest with single and distributed lag models.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 73%

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Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations among the Elderly

Breysse

McDermott

et al. 2014

IJGI

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In July 2002, lightning strikes ignited over 250 fires in Quebec, Canada, destroying over one million hectares of forest. The smoke plume generated from the fires had a major impact on air quality across the east coast of the U.S. Using data from the Medicare National Claims History File and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National air pollution monitoring network, we evaluated the health impact of smoke exposure on 5.9 million elderly people (ages 65+) in the Medicare population in 81 counties in 11 northeastern and Mid-Atlantic States of the US. We estimated differences OPEN ACCESS ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2014, 3 714 in the exposure to ambient PM 2.5 -airborne particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter of ≤2.5 µm-concentrations and hospitalizations for cardiovascular, pulmonary and injury outcomes, before and during the smoke episode. We found that there was an associated 49.6% (95% confidence interval (CI), 29.8, 72.3) and 64.9% (95% CI, 44.3-88.5) increase rate of hospitalization for respiratory and cardiovascular diagnoses, respectively, when the smoke plume was present compared to before the smoke plume had arrived. Our study suggests that rapid increases in PM 2.5 concentrations resulting from wildfire smoke can impact the health of elderly populations thousands of kilometers removed from the fires.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 73%

“…Forest fires are known to be a major source of air pollutants [1] on a local and a global scale [2][3][4][5][6]. Each year, combustion products from local and distant wildfires impact large populations worldwide [5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations among the Elderly

Breysse

McDermott

et al. 2014

IJGI

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“…This was due primarily to regulatory measures such as the NOx State Implementation Plan (SIP) Call of 2002 (Aburn et al, 2015) that lead to regional reductions of anthropogenic NOx (nitrogen oxides), an ozone precursor (Gégo, et al, 2007), and a decline of the annual average number of exceedance days from 52 during [2000][2001][2002] Wildfires are known sources of both primary and secondary pollutants, including carbon monoxide (CO), fine particles (PM 2.5 ), NOx, volatile organic compounds (VOCs; Hu et al, 2008), and O 3 (Andreae and Merlet, 2001;McKeen et al, 2002;Bytnerowicz, et al, 2010). Similar to the study presented here, Canadian wildfires have increased O 3 concentrations in Houston, TX (Morris et al, 2006), and as far away as Europe (Spichtinger et al, 2001). Evidence of Canadian wildfire smoke and biomass burning affecting the MA's particulate matter (PM) air quality was also previously reported (Adam et al, 2004;Colarco et al, 2004;Sapkota et al, 2005), but wildfire smoke has also been recognized in high-O 3 events on the East Coast (Fiore et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Observations and impacts of transported Canadian wildfire smoke on ozone and aerosol air quality in the Maryland region on June 9–12, 2015

Dreessen¹,

Sullivan

Delgado

2016

Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

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Canadian wildfire smoke impacted air quality across the northern Mid-Atlantic (MA) of the United States during June 9-12, 2015. A multiday exceedance of the new 2015 70-ppb National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone (O 3 ) followed, resulting in Maryland being incompliant with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) revised 2015 O 3 NAAQS. Surface in situ, balloon-borne, and remote sensing observations monitored the impact of the wildfire smoke at Maryland air quality monitoring sites. At peak smoke concentrations in Maryland, wildfire-attributable volatile organic compounds (VOCs) more than doubled, while non-NOx oxides of nitrogen (NOz) tripled, suggesting long range transport of NOx within the smoke plume. Peak daily average PM 2.5 was 32.5 µg m −3 with large fractions coming from black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC), with a synonymous increase in carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations. Measurements indicate that smoke tracers at the surface were spatially and temporally correlated with maximum 8-hr O 3 concentrations in the MA, all which peaked on June 11. Despite initial smoke arrival late on June 9, 2015, O 3 production was inhibited due to ultraviolet (UV) light attenuation, lower temperatures, and nonoptimal surface layer composition. Comparison of Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model surface O 3 forecasts to observations suggests 14 ppb additional O 3 due to smoke influences in northern Maryland. Despite polluted conditions, observations of a nocturnal low-level jet (NLLJ) and Chesapeake Bay Breeze (BB) were associated with decreases in O 3 in this case. While infrequent in the MA, wildfire smoke may be an increasing fractional contribution to high-O 3 days, particularly in light of increased wildfire frequency in a changing climate, lower regional emissions, and tighter air quality standards.Implications: The presented event demonstrates how a single wildfire event associated with an ozone exceedance of the NAAQS can prevent the Baltimore region from complying with lower ozone standards. This relatively new problem in Maryland is due to regional reductions in NOx emissions that led to record low numbers of ozone NAAQS violations in the last 3 years. This case demonstrates the need for adequate means to quantify and justify ozone impacts from wildfires, which can only be done through the use of observationally based models. The data presented may also improve future air quality forecast models.PAPER HISTORY

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“…Aircraft and ground-based measurements have shown that Asian fires can influence O 3 concentrations over North America Morris et al, 2006), the Arctic (Warnecke et al, 2008) and even Europe (Simmonds et al, 2005). For example, Bertschi and Jaffe (2005) have shown that Siberian fires have caused three ozone pollution events over the coast of Washington state in 2002.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attribution and evolution of ozone from Asian wild fires using satellite and aircraft measurements during the ARCTAS campaign

et al. 2012

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Abstract.We use ozone and carbon monoxide measurements from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES), model estimates of Ozone, CO, and ozone pre-cursors from the Real-time Air Quality Modeling System (RAQMS), and data from the NASA DC8 aircraft to characterize the source and dynamical evolution of ozone and CO in Asian wildfire plumes during the spring ARCTAS campaign 2008. On the 19 April, NASA DC8 O 3 and aerosol Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) observed two biomass burning plumes originating from North-Western Asia (Kazakhstan) and SouthEastern Asia (Thailand) that advected eastward over the Pacific reaching North America in 10 to 12 days. Using both TES observations and RAQMS chemical analyses, we track the wildfire plumes from their source to the ARCTAS DC8 platform. In addition to photochemical production due to ozone pre-cursors, we find that exchange between the stratosphere and the troposphere is a major factor influencing O 3 concentrations for both plumes. For example, the Kazakhstan and Siberian plumes at 55 degrees North is a region of significant springtime stratospheric/tropospheric exchange. Stratospheric air influences the Thailand plume after it is lofted to high altitudes via the Himalayas. Using comparisons of the model to the aircraft and satellite measurements, we estimate that the Kazakhstan plume is responsible for increases of O 3 and CO mixing ratios by approximately 6.4 ppbv and 38 ppbv in the lower troposphere (height of 2 to 6 km), and the Thailand plume is responsible for increases of O 3 and CO mixing ratios of approximately 11 ppbv and 71 ppbv in the upper troposphere (height of 8 to 12 km) respectively. However, there are significant sources of uncertainty in these estimates that point to the need for future improvements in both model and satellite observations. For example, it is challenging to characterize the fraction of air parcels from the stratosphere versus those from the fire because of the low sensitivity of the TES CO estimates used to mark stratospheric air versus air parcels affected by the smoke plume. Model transport uncertainties, such as too much dispersion, results in a broad plume structure from the Kazakhstan fires that is approximately 2 km lower than the plume observed by aircraft. Consequently, the model and TES data do not capture the photochemical production of ozone in the Kazakhstan plume that is apparent in the aircraft in situ data. However, ozone and CO distributions from TES and RAQMS model estimates of the Thailand plume are within the uncertainties of the TES data. Therefore, the RAQMS model is better able to characterize the emissions from this fire, the mixing of ozone from the stratosphere to the plume, and the photochemical production and transport of ozone and ozone pre-cursors as the plume moves across the Pacific.

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Alaskan and Canadian forest fires exacerbate ozone pollution over Houston, Texas, on 19 and 20 July 2004

Cited by 148 publications

References 34 publications

Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations among the Elderly

Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations among the Elderly

Observations and impacts of transported Canadian wildfire smoke on ozone and aerosol air quality in the Maryland region on June 9–12, 2015

Attribution and evolution of ozone from Asian wild fires using satellite and aircraft measurements during the ARCTAS campaign

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