The plumes emanated from wildfires raging across America’s border. This May was the hottest in Canadian history and the seventh-driest as well
and 7th were literally dark days in New York. Smoke filled the air, shrouding the skyline in an eerie blur. Airports delayed incoming flights, and baseball games were postponed. Health officials told residents to stay indoors. Measured by Air Quality Index , which records overall pollution, New York, which normally lands in the middle of the global pack, ranked as the worst of any big city in the world.
The plumes emanated from wildfires raging across America’s border. This May was the hottest in Canadian history, with average temperatures almost a full Celsius degree warmer than the previous record set in 1998, and the seventh-driest as well. Such conditions dry out vegetation and help fires start and spread. Sure enough, by early June the area burnt by wildfires in Canada was 13 times greater than normal, and far above the total for all of 2022.
The current fires are centred in Quebec, a region where smoke is less likely to threaten American air quality than in the west, because its winds generally blow east towards the Atlantic. However, a “heat dome”, in which high atmospheric pressure traps hot air below, has formed over central Canada. This sends air, now laden with unusually large volumes of smoke, rotating clockwise towards a low-pressure area above New England, and from there down along America’s eastern seaboard.
The cost to public health will depend in part on how much people remain indoors. One academic study found that total visits to hospitals actually decline following extremely high smoke levels, because people stay at home and are less likely to suffer car accidents, sports injuries and the like. However, without proper filtration, pollutants still make their way indoors, and cases of respiratory ailments surge.
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