According to MACC-II atmospheric services operated at ECMWF, June 2012 was marked with the highest global amount of biomass burnt due to wildfires in the past decade. Fires in western North-America as well as in Siberia have been particularly acute over the past weeks, making plumes of pollutants affecting visibility and air quality particularly ubiquitous.
The MACC-II forecasts were also instrumental in showing that the haze experienced in the Seattle area around 7 July was actually coming from Siberian fires.
The global fire emissions service of MACC-II is operated at ECMWF in near-real-time, using satellite-based observations of open fires. We find that the global amount of biomass burnt last June is the highest of the past decade, with wildfires particularly acute in boreal forests in North-America and Asia. The western US have been particularly affected since the end of June, with severe impacts in Colorado and now Oregon and Idaho. Fires are also raging in western Canada. Combined with hot and dry weather, air quality and visibility have been significantly affected. This situation makes understanding the origin of events and, importantly, answering accurately the general public’s legitimate questions particularly challenging.
On 7 July 2012 the sky above Seattle in the American north-west filled with a smoky haze, which lasted for several days. MACC-II forecasts showed that this smoke was not originating from the large fires in America, but from even larger fires in Russia.
The animation shows the fire activity and smoke plumes in Siberia from the end of June 2012 and the consecutive transport of smoke across the Pacific. The MACC-II fire emissions are superimposed over the combined organic matter and black carbon fields of the MACC-II global aerosol analyses and forecasts. A posteriori comparison with observations from the space-borne lidar CALIPSO confirms the remarkable accuracy of the MACC-II/ECMWF forecasts (see the dedicated MACC-II news page for more details).
Various American news articles combined information from MACC-II with observations to illustrate the impact of this large plume of biomass burning aerosol and carbon monoxide (KPLU, US Air Quality Smog Blog, Pique, Cliff Mass Weather Blog). This confirms the increasing world-wide use of MACC-II as a respected source of information on the atmospheric environment.