View of hazy sun from RPI campus. Photo by S. Wagner
This week, the sky took on a distinctive haze – Smoke from the western US wildfires officially reached the east coast. The frequency and intensity of west coast wildfires is increasing – A trend driven by fire suppression (fuel accumulation) and exacerbated by a warming climate. Wildfires release carbon to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, smoke, and other aerosols. This atmospheric carbon release is somewhat buffered by the simultaneous production of charcoal, which converts fast-cycling (relatively reactive) biomass carbon to slow-cycling (relatively inert) charcoal. In the Wagner lab, we study the formation, transport, and environmental fate of this slowly-cycling pool of fire-derived carbon.
In New York, it is unusual to experience fire at all, let alone the effects of wildfires burning ~3000 miles away – A visual reminder that local burn events have widespread and global impacts.
