Western wildfire smoke plumes are getting taller, study shows

Taller plumes means more people can be harmed by toxic smoke.

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Jul. 28, 2022

FILE – This aerial photo provided by the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service shows a tundra fire burning near the community of St. Mary’s, Alaska, on June 10, 2022. Alaska’s remarkable wildfire season includes over 530 blazes that have burned an area more than three times the size of Rhode Island, with nearly all the impacts, including dangerous breathing conditions from smoke, attributed to fires started by lightning. (Ryan McPherson/Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service via AP, File)

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Smoke streams from wildfires in the West are growing taller, researchers have found.

he plumes are most likely increasing in size due to hotter temperature, smaller snowpack and an increase in aridity stemming from climate change.

In at least one area, the average height of smoke plumes increased about 720 feet per year, researchers found.

Smoke streams from Western wildfires have grown taller and climate change is most likely to blame.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Utah found that maximum smoke plume heights have increased on average every year, with some places averaging a 750 foot increase every year since 2003.

Taller smoke plumes means that more harmful fine particles can travel farther from their wildfire source, potentially hurting more people.

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Wildfire smoke is made up of a mix of gases and fine particles which penetrate deep into the lungs causing numerous health problems from burning eyes to chronic heart and lung disease, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

For the study, researchers studied trends in smoke plume height and modeled plume activity for roughly 4.6 million smoke plumes in the Western United States and Canada between 2003 and 2020.

Researchers then divided the plume data along EPA ecoregions to compare maximum smoke plume height measured during August and September of each year.

In four regions, researchers found that maximum plume heights increased by an average of 320 feet per year and in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion of California, maximum plume height increased by 750 feet per year.

“Should these trends persist into the future it would suggest that enhanced Western U.S. wildfire activity will likely correspond to increasingly frequent degradation of air quality at local to continental scales,” Kai Wilmot, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, said in a statement.

Wildfires in the United States particularly in the western part of the country have gotten more deadly. Already this year, wildfires have burned through 5.6 million acres, roughly twice the amount of land burned last year, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

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