From Quebec to British Columbia to Hawaii, North America is facing an extraordinary wildfire season -- and regions both near and far have found themselves increasingly blighted by smoke exposure. (France 24)

ACOM Scientist Brett Palm spoke with BBC World News correspondent Victoria Valentine about the influx of smoke from Quebec wildfires into the east coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. Measured levels of PM2.5 were high enough to cause health concerns.

Smoke from wildfires in Canada brought record-breaking air pollution to the United States this spring, creating dangerous air quality from Bismarck, N.D., to Denver and Detroit to New York City and Washington. (The Washington Post)

Billowing clouds of Canadian wildfire smoke have transformed blue skies into apocalyptic orange scenes across the eastern United States.

Canada is experiencing one of the worst starts to its wildfire season ever recorded.

Smoke from wildfires in Canada has engulfed the East Coast, cloaking cities in a hazy smog and putting some 100 million people under air quality alerts.

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires is once again hazing up the Front Range. Not only is it unpleasant to breathe, new research shows that smoke can erode the protective ozone layer.
9News, Denver, Colorado

Residents of Boulder, Colorado were greeted with an unwelcome visitor this week: a decline in air quality that left them with hazy skies and concerns about their well-being. The source of this phenomenon, as it turned out, lay far beyond the state borders.

David Edwards attended the launch of the TEMPO satellite instrument to monitor air quality over North America and in an article for Science magazine, Gabi Pfister commented on how TEMPO will help understand the complexity of air pollution over Colorado's Front Range.

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ACOM scientist Rebecca Hornbrook contributed to an article at USA Today on the impacts of wildfire smoke on agricultural workers.

During August 2022, two research aircraft will allow a team of international scientists to study how the Asian summer monsoon affects atmospheric chemistry and global climate.

Wildfire evacuation access permits (the so-called interim “ag passes”) were first issued in 2017 for Sonoma and Napa counties, allowing vineyard and livestock workers in Northern California to gain access during fires and other natural disasters.

NASA’s Terra satellite has been taking measurements of Earth’s atmosphere for more than two decades. One of the five sensors on board, Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT), makes daily measurements of the air pollutant carbon monoxide.

For more than two decades, NASA’s Terra satellite has measured atmospheric concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO).

Rebecca Buchholz led a study on large and intense wildfires in the US Pacific Northwest.

An international agreement to protect the ozone layer is expected to prevent 443 million cases of skin cancer and 63 million cataract cases for people born in the United States through the end of this century.

ACOM scientist Brett Palm contributed to an article in the Casper Star Tribune regarding the summer wildfires and Wyoming air quality.

ACOM scientist Frank Flocke contributed to an article at the Colorado Sun discussing ozone pollution along the Front Range.

Lockdowns during 2020 in response to COVID-19 resulted in drastic cuts to emissions, especially from vehicle tailpipes, and yet some urban areas saw a paradoxical spike in ozone air pollution.