[HN Gopher] Wildfire Smoke in Northeastern US Visible on Goes Ea...
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Wildfire Smoke in Northeastern US Visible on Goes East Images
Author : hnburnsy
Score : 92 points
Date : 2023-06-07 19:11 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov)
| jnsie wrote:
| In NYC and was just outside. Large percentage of people wearing
| masks. Smells like a fire pit. Looks like blade runner.
| Interesting times.
| kulikalov wrote:
| Is it unusual? My first year here
| kadoban wrote:
| Yes, quite unusual.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's pretty much unprecedented.
| Alupis wrote:
| Pretty normal for California the past few years...
| tjohns wrote:
| Unprecedented for the east coast. It's a reality we've been
| living with on the west coast for the last few years
| already.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| This is the thickest, longest lasting, and furthest
| traveling wild fire smoke I've ever experienced. I Left
| the windows open to sleep and I woke up with a voice two
| octaves lower.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Was worse in SF a few years ago
| kaesar14 wrote:
| To my research, SF AQI has never topped 249. New York
| just topped out at 342 today with no sign of letting up.
| I won't dispute that SF wildfire season being so frequent
| and long lasting, there's been nasty periods, but no it's
| factually incorrect that SF has ever been at one time
| worse than what's happening in NYC right now.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'll admit - looked at the New York ones for today after
| making this comment and it looked higher than I had seen
| in SF. I was basing on what I had seen on purpleair
| yesterday.
| tjohns wrote:
| Checking my logs from the CZU Fire Complex back in 2020,
| the AQI at my house in the SF Peninsula topped out at
| 766. It was pretty bad.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It has broken a 1981 record. Never been this bad. No that's
| not normal.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| If you go outside in NYC you should definitely be wearing an
| N95 or better. Avoid going out if you can. Current AQI here is
| 400+ aka "Hazardous". It's currently sunny at the park near me:
| https://imgur.com/a/DLhxEWL
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That's not exactly a surprise, is it? The GOES images from
| California and elsewhere on the west coast have been apocalyptic
| in recent years.
| alexose wrote:
| It's hard to watch a whole new cohort of people have to
| confront this for the first time. It brings back a lot of the
| feelings I had back in 2020...
| kylecazar wrote:
| It's pretty wild here in CT. Thick, acrid air. I suppose
| Californians have been dealing with this for a while, but I
| haven't experienced it in my life up here.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Not just California, the entire west coast. Seattle's season
| breakdown has "smoke" slotted neatly between two chunks of
| "summer", typically lasting from late June/early July to late
| August/early September.
| zamalek wrote:
| > Seattle's season breakdown has "smoke" slotted neatly
|
| We called the season "Smogust" when we lived there.
| COGlory wrote:
| And the northern Rockies, including parts of Alberta and
| Saskatchewan. While there are occasionally local fires, they
| are never as bad as the smoke from California.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Was there smoke last year (2022)? I don't recall any. I
| remember 2020 being bad, and a few days in 2021, but nothing
| in 2022.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| There was, but it was "many weeks of sporadic AQI 80" as
| opposed to "a week or two of continuous AQI 200" like 2020
| was.
| mhink wrote:
| God, 2020 was absolutely _horrendous_ for smoke. Also, it
| was definitely noticeably smoky during the "heat dome"
| in 2021, which just made the whole situation that much
| worse.
| vinaypai wrote:
| I'm in NYC. The sky was a deep orange in the afternoon and you
| could easily look directly at the midday sun without discomfort.
| There is a visible haze indoors looking down a long hallway.
|
| It's cleared up a bit now but still quite bad.
| Eumenes wrote:
| How come all these fires started at the same time, on the same
| day across Quebec?
| https://is2.4chan.org/pol/1686160767790674.webm
| [deleted]
| hnburnsy wrote:
| There are fire and lighting satellite animations, go back 24
| hours and you can see the fires flare across Canada...example..
| .https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1..
| .
| baggy_trough wrote:
| presumably lightning.
| alexose wrote:
| Yep, almost certainly this. The same thing has been happening
| every year out west. It sometimes takes a day or more for
| lightning-caused fires to grow to a size that they can be
| detected via satellite.
| tricksforfree wrote:
| Does anyone have proof of storms that happened in those areas
| coinciding with the burns and then subsequent wind patterns
| kicking off the larger burns?
|
| It's believable but without proof it's just as plausible as
| coordinated arson.
| oliveshell wrote:
| > _"...without proof, it 's just as plausible as..."_
|
| You may be interested to know that people whose job
| requires them to be epistemologically rigorous do not think
| in this way:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_epistemology#Fundame
| n...
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Satellites will pick it up if it's lightning. It's very
| common (see giant fires on the West Coast in the past few
| years).
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I don't see how one could reasonably say a thing that has
| happened before and a thing that hasn't happened before are
| equally plausible explanations for a thing that is
| currently happening.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| I don't know about in the US, but in Canada in recent
| weeks there have been conspiracy theories floating around
| that the wildfires in Alberta were started by The
| Libs(tm) in order to make the provincial Conservative
| government look bad in the lead-up to an election.
|
| So, uh, keep in mind that some commenters might be Just
| Asking Questions.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I don't wanna be too cynical but I did look at the
| accounts of the two people in this thread who seem to
| find the idea plausible and found...pretty much exactly
| what I expected to find. So, yeah, I agree with you,
| lotta JAQing off.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Historical lightning map:
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/historical_maps.php?map=30
|
| Go back to June 1 for a good example of lots of lightning
| in the right area. https://imgur.com/a/LcM8sMe
|
| June 6 also has some in the same rough area of Quebec
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Coordinated arson of that massive a scale would be
| incredibly difficult, and what would be the motivation to
| do that?
| Eumenes wrote:
| Maybe those kids throwing soup at paintings
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| The kids throwing soup at paintings already committed
| crimes attacking oil infrastructure and shutting down
| certain oil infrastructures (pipelines etc) that got them
| precisely no attention. You only know them from the soup
| can shit, which proves their whole point.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Sending 100,000 spam mails in five minutes is difficult.
| This should be much more simple if you really want to do
| it.
|
| A plausible motivation could be to keep the people that
| matters distracted and paralyzed to react while you blow
| an huge damm and create the second worst environmental
| disaster since Chernobyl in a well known country,
| casually in the same f*ing day
|
| But I'm just speculating. All possible options are open
| at this point except thinking that this is normal. I
| assume that plagues also helped.
| dvh wrote:
| After sunrise PIG[1] as temperature raises and humidity falls
| goes up. If there are conditions for fire PIG will nicely
| synchronize it so it will go up almost instantly.
|
| [1]https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/fuel-
| moisture/proba...
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Your video shows June 2, with fires starting to be visible from
| space around noon Eastern on that day.
|
| On the evening of June 1, a large lightning storm passed
| through the area. (You can even see the storm's clouds
| continuing on towards Maine in your video.)
| https://imgur.com/a/LcM8sMe
| https://www.blitzortung.org/en/historical_maps.php?map=30
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Climate change
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Something interesting I noticed when we had extremely dry days
| in my area (fairly warm, too, but the really noteworthy part
| was the utter lack of humidity) was that fires sprang up
| seeming randomly all around the area. Started seeing conspiracy
| theories of arsonists going around lighting things on fire. I
| gather that there are _many_ triggers for fires which normally
| don 't get enough traction to take off.
| akiselev wrote:
| You can also see the haze on Zoom Earth [1] with a hourly
| timelapse. There seems to be an especially large cloud of it
| hovering off of the East Coast of the US and Canada
|
| [1] https://zoom.earth/
| hn8305823 wrote:
| With this wider perspective you can see the very wide range of
| fires producing smoke. A lot is getting funneled to the
| Northeast US but it looks like some of it is even getting
| funneled into the midwest on the other side of the weather
| system.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| It's hazy here in Virginia as well, but nothing like NY. Every
| few years, the Great Dismal Swamp catches on fire (a bit south of
| here) and the peat moss smoldering creates the most acrid, thick
| smoke in the area.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Experienced this in CA, so bad we really couldn't spend more than
| a few minutes outdoors. A good room air purifier and closed
| windows was a big help.
| dboreham wrote:
| Every single year we have severe wikdfire smoke in Montana (and
| much of the mountain west) from August to September and sometimes
| into October. Never mentioned in national media.
|
| But when the same thing happens in NYC we have screaming
| headlines about how terrible the air quality is.
| KidComputer wrote:
| Probably because the entire population of Montana makes up just
| one neighborhood of NYC
| jes wrote:
| Yep, fully agree.
|
| I live in Washington State, and I refer to that time of year as
| "headache season."
| rr808 wrote:
| Of course the population is different but mostly news reports
| talk about things that are unusual. If there are fires every
| year it isn't really news.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Maybe it's because this being unheard of in NYC is literally
| what makes it happening newsworthy?
|
| California has wildfires literally every year but they still
| make the news when they're particularly damaging and record
| breaking. Fires have never impacted NYC to this extent in
| living memory - it's deeply unusual for the region and
| inherently newsworthy.
| as4296 wrote:
| It's funny how this is happening on the East Coast when wildfires
| should be a Cali thing
| mig39 wrote:
| Is this the wildfire smoke from Northern Canada?
|
| Here's the view from Fort McMurray, Alberta -- a drone video I
| took last week. Check out the swarm of birds at 2:30 or so in the
| video.
|
| Fort McMurray had Canada's largest wildfire in 2016, and we don't
| have much more left to burn, but nearby smoke makes this place
| surreal.
|
| https://youtu.be/GevKM4L8Nl8
|
| Also, this is such a regular occurrence these days that we have
| websites that predict the smoke, like https://firesmoke.ca
| ipkpjersi wrote:
| Other provinces are having wildfires too like Quebec and
| Ontario IIRC.
| mig39 wrote:
| Yeah, a big one in Nova Scotia recently too.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Which images should we check out?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Check out the GeoColor images. The area over PA and neighbors
| has a smoky haze, just south and southwest of the New England
| cloud cover.
|
| https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/SECTOR/ne/GEOCOL...
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Related: a historical instance of fire smoke so dense it darkened
| the skies (1780)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England%27s_Dark_Day
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| I thought most of that smoke was coming from Canada, am I
| correct?
| duxup wrote:
| When it dipped down into Minnesota, I went out for a walk. The
| smoke was so thick. I could've swore there had to have been a
| house fire, a block or two away.
|
| On some streets, I couldn't see the end of the street it was so
| smoky.
| [deleted]
| nicetryguy wrote:
| I am in eastern PA; the smoky haze smells awful and the orange
| tinged sky looks like dusk in the mid afternoon. It's pretty
| serious.
| Cyphase wrote:
| I remember when we had that in the SF area.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Skies_Day
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Wow! It's not quite that orange here, but i figure this would
| be a fairly common occurrence in CA.
| paranoidxprod wrote:
| I'm on Long Island and it feels like it's getting closer
| and closer to that.
| mynameishere wrote:
| I think the WTC webcam is pretty neat:
|
| https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/worldtradecenter/?cam=s...
|
| It looks like a rust-only paint swathes.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Here on Long Island, everything is sepiatone, and it smells like
| a smokehouse.
|
| But I also know that folks in California and Australia have been
| dealing with exactly this, for a long time. It's news, because
| it's happening to the Northeast US.
|
| I was watching AppleTV+ _Extrapolations_ [0], which is actually
| damn depressing. The first episode has wildfires everywhere, and
| air quality around the globe sucks.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrapolations_(TV_series)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Here on Long Island, everything is sepiatone, and it smells
| like a smokehouse.
|
| I'm in Rhode Island this week. Same deal, although not as bad I
| suspect, based on a photo of NYC I saw.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I'm in Brooklyn and sometime mid-afternoon I walked out into my
| living room to it being completely dark inside and orange out
| my windows. Local AQI has said 330-350 all afternoon.
|
| And somehow this is a lot better than when I was in Delhi one
| winter. Some nights I'd see 500+, and there wasn't much escape
| from it in our airbnb in hauz khas, I'd just sleep with a
| keffiyeh around my face. People are living like this almost
| daily in cities around the world, to the point where the locals
| are sort of just used to it. Pretty depressing, but hopefully
| we'll start doing something about it.
| COGlory wrote:
| To anyone who is experiencing this for the first time, some tips
| I've found useful:
|
| 1) Even if it seems counterintuitive, try not to move air. Don't
| run fans or open windows. Do run filtration systems, but
| preferably interior ones. Even exhausting outside will draw new
| air (and particles) inside. Keep doors and windows closed as much
| as possible.
|
| 2) Run humidifiers if you have them. If you don't, and you just
| desperately need relief, close the bathroom door and run the
| shower hot for 10-15 minutes (i.e. make a steam room). That
| usually helps my sinuses and eyes quite a bit. You can also try
| breathing through a warm damp rag, although that gets pretty old
| pretty quickly.
|
| 3) No science behind it that I'm aware of, but I find that carrot
| juice really helps my throat when it's sore.
|
| 4) Be sure to try and enjoy at least one sunset. They will be
| glorious.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I was just on a call with someone in NY and they had to end the
| call early because their eyes were burning and they were having
| trouble breathing. It looked _really_ bad.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Were they taking the call outside?
| lbotos wrote:
| I'm in my apt in NYC right now with windows closed and you
| can smell/feel it still. It's surprisingly intense.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| Inside.
| tzs wrote:
| I was curious and just checked the NYC AQI. It's 324 right now,
| which is classified as "hazardous". Wow.
|
| That would definitely suck. Here on the other side of the
| country, in the Puget Sound area, we get some bad days of
| wildfire smoke every year, but I don't think I've ever seen it
| that high. The highest I recall is around 250.
|
| A good HEPA filter can really help. I use an older version of
| this [1]. It can generally keep my living room AQI below 10ish.
| I read that the Whirlpool brand name was sold off to some
| generic oversees appliance maker several years ago, so I don't
| know if that one on Amazon is as effective as my 20+ year old
| one.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Whirlpool-Whispure-Purifier-
| Cleaner-A...
| tjohns wrote:
| Back in 2020, the AQI at my house in the SF Bay Area hit 800.
| (I was directly downwind from the CZU Lightning Complex
| fire.) To say that was bad was an _understatement_.
|
| I had to seal up every door and window to my house with
| plastic, then put three 1200 sq. ft. rated HEPA filters in a
| single bedroom to get the air quality in that one room down
| to livable.
|
| That's also when I discovered the real difference between an
| N95 mask and a N100 respirator.
| jrockway wrote:
| It's an odd shade of yellow outside and it smells like you are
| inside a wood smoker. I have my air filters running almost full
| blast and it only helps a little bit; still way above "normal".
| I'm coughing a little bit as well. Overall, less than ideal! I
| will not be going for a walk this evening.
| olivermarks wrote:
| We really have to get back on track with controlled burns after
| the environmentalist 'save all trees' experiment that started in
| the 1960's has put us in the position we are in now.
|
| Canada used to have many controlled burns throughout last century
| until the last quarter - Nova Scotia is a typical example (1979
| paper):
|
| https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1139/x79-031
|
| California is dangerously behind on forestry and therefore fire
| management compared to earlier decades. Fuel has to be removed or
| fire and smoke will cause massive damage and have a very serious
| psychological and economic impact.
|
| Native Americans conducted controlled burns for thousands of
| years until they started getting shot by forestry rangers a
| hundred years ago.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...
|
| There are no saw mills left in Northern California and strict
| rules about not cutting trees down. Wood is imported from Canada
| at massive expense, driving up the cost of housing. we seem to
| have lost the plot a bit here.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is literally not being able to see the wood for the tress.
|
| Controlled burns won't fix the fact that the Sea Surface
| Temperature anomalies are in the region of 2C in some areas.
|
| Or that the 2m Temp Anomalies are of the order of 6-10C across
| most of the US and large parts of Russia.
|
| Neither of those is going to make future fires less likely,
| controlled or otherwise.
|
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/todays-weather/?var_id=ssta...
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| My understanding is that this isn't due to a lack of controlled
| burns but actually due to an unseasonally warm winter not
| killing bugs that attack and kill trees, leaving an excessive
| amount of dead wood to burn this year. No amount of controlled
| burning of the years before would prevent a lot of dead trees
| this year making for kindling.
| xattt wrote:
| Specific to Atlantic Canada, there is a lot of felled trees
| turning to kindling after Hurricane Fiona last September.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's everything. Natives used to practice controlled burns to
| sustain habitability. Observe parallels to three sisters
| agriculture. Then as their populations were eradicated these
| methods were lost.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Again, it does not matter. Open your eyes
|
| This is environmental crime. And when there is a crime, there
| is a benefit for criminals. Saying that if we burn some, here
| and there, the criminals will stop, is like saying that if we
| paint the banks in a nice pastel tone and put a banner asking
| politely not to rob, the bank robbers will agree to stop and go
| away.
|
| Europe tried that in the past repeatedly. It didn't worked.
| Even worse, the trend is increasing among farmers manipulated
| by extreme European political currents that overlap extensively
| the Putin and Trump speeches. Places of Europe that never had a
| problem with wildfires started to burn since a couple of years.
| We hear political parties trow the first stone and claim that
| environmental laws are unfair. Just one week later, the place
| burns down magically. Is environmental boycott, and will not
| stop until we stop them or remove the benefits.
|
| Either we wake up and strike back, or we accept that the
| extinction whirl will be much closer than we expected, and much
| faster than we can adapt.
| mfb wrote:
| "no saw mills left in Northern California" - eh? This is just
| one company's sawmills (they are hiring): https://www.spi-
| ind.com/Operations/SawmillOperations
| ajross wrote:
| I don't know what that poster was talking about either. Even
| if CA were to outlaw lumber milling in the north of the
| state, the rest of the PNW produces enough for the continent
| already. There's _plenty_ of wood in the deep blue queer
| tree-hugging west coast. The USA is a huge exporter of the
| crop, actually.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| It's environmentalists fault! (ignore how much we're
| overheating the planet)
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean it literally is their fault; kind of funny in a ironic
| way but mostly just sad.
| lxgr wrote:
| There is no contradiction between the statements "global
| warming is a serious problem" and "preventing wildfires
| completely has some disadvantages vs. controlled burns".
| olivermarks wrote:
| @ixgr Exactly. Thank you.
| M4v3R wrote:
| There's actually stuff being done about preventing Wildfires in
| the US, controlled burns being of these things, creating "fuel
| breaks" (gaps that prevent fire from progressing) is another,
| and there's a LOT more. But a lot of time that's not enough and
| the reason for that is like with every other government effort
| - bureaucracy and endless paperwork. It can take months before
| a project can even start because the forest management has to
| compile all the necessary paperwork. But they are really
| passionate about doing this to prevent as many wildfires as
| possible.
|
| Source: I currently work for a startup that makes software that
| shortens the time necessary to prepare this paperwork which
| potentially could cut the time it takes in half or more.
| ArlenBales wrote:
| I think population growth is the main factor for why prescribed
| burns of forests have dwindled. We have cities and towns that
| have expanded into forests and high-risk fire areas. Maybe we
| shouldn't have ever allowed this, but it happened, and now
| we're stuck with it (good luck getting people to move out).
| r00fus wrote:
| > Maybe we shouldn't have ever allowed this, but it happened,
| and now we're stuck with it (good luck getting people to move
| out).
|
| They will move out when they can't insure their properties
| anymore. [1] Note the refusal to cover properties isn't a
| blanket withdrawal; I got a call from State Farm just last
| week - but I live in a major metro.
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-insurance-
| mar...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean that's only happening because California made it
| illegal to charge the real risk adjusted price for
| insurance. The companies weren't going to start losing
| money on every home in CA so they are leaving.
| today20201014 wrote:
| > California made it illegal to charge the real risk
| adjusted price for insurance
|
| I'd like to know more about this. Do you have a
| reference?
| olivermarks wrote:
| Environmental fashion became obsessed with trees as 'the
| lungs of the planet' despite ocean phytoplankton processing
| most of the air we breath.
|
| We have been conditioned to believe humans are destroying the
| fragile planet but ironically the reality is that we are
| increasingly irresponsible stewards of it, flying in the face
| of thousands of years of evidence.
| sampo wrote:
| > ocean phytoplankton processing most of the air we breath.
|
| This is not true.
|
| Ocean photosynthesis produces about 50% of the oxygen in
| the atmosphere, but ocean respiration also consumes about
| the same amount. The oceans are about oxygen neutral. Same
| goes for the other 50%, but in land ecosystems.
|
| https://theconversation.com/humans-will-always-have-
| oxygen-t...
| DayDollar wrote:
| Well, that plancton will die off, when the oceans get
| accidic.. so it will be the trees only in the long run.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| We're killing the phytoplankton too.
|
| https://medium.com/climate-conscious/how-the-loss-of-
| phytopl...
| version_five wrote:
| That may be true in California. In northern Canada there are
| very few populated places, I believe these are mostly in
| complete wilderness
| barbazoo wrote:
| Surely the much dryer/warmer weather due to climate change has
| something to do with it, no?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| From the core assumption that there would be more dry days
| doesn't change the fact that you will encounter more
| ferocious wildfires (actually if we had less dry days we
| would encounter even more ferocious wildfires because of less
| burns in general when you think about it).
| S201 wrote:
| OP did not say that climate change was not a factor. Both of
| these are contributing factors.
|
| I will second the point about lack of controlled burns and
| logging absolutely being a problem. Look at photos of western
| forests from the late 1800s and you'll see that we have far
| more trees now than a century ago. Here's an example of
| Yosemite valley: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/
| 29/opinion/sunda.... A century of fire suppression and
| climate change have proved to be a dangerous combination. One
| of these is easier to correct though if we could get past the
| idea that every tree must be saved at all costs.
| pharrington wrote:
| OP didn't even _mention_ climate change in the post, and
| previously has explicitly denied that climate change is a
| problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166197
| akiselev wrote:
| The problem is that Canada is covered in peatlands. Once they
| dry out, controlled burns can ignite peat several meters deep
| and release one of the biggest carbon stores on the planet.
|
| See what happened with the Russian wildfires in 2010 [1] - this
| is a consequence of climate change and unfortunately many of
| the old fire prevention strategies won't work with Canadian
| peatland drying out.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Russian_wildfires
| zamadatix wrote:
| Won't that happen whether or not these fires are controlled
| or uncontrolled, at this point?
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Almost all of California wildfire fuel is dense brush, not
| trees.
| ajross wrote:
| This is almost exactly backwards. "Controlled burns" are the
| workaround, not the solution. Timber land naturally burns
| regularly, but we started _fighting_ those fires in the last
| century to protect the lumber industry. The problem then
| becomes, a few decades later, that you have a forest filled
| with dead branches and snags that _would have burned,
| piecewise, over decades, but didn 't_. Now eventually something
| gets out of control and you have a fire anyway, except that now
| it's much (much) larger than it would have been naturally.
|
| So the workaround becomes creating corridors of excess-fuel-
| free forest via "controlled burns". But that's not the fix! The
| problem was preexisting.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.sevarg.net/2021/08/28/temtop-air-quality-sensors...
| has some details on air quality sensors and at the bottom, some
| homemade air filters you can make; they work well.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I've been looking at picking up an outdoor air quality monitor
| from PurpleAir. Can anyone vouch for them?
|
| I've found their air quality map the most helpful:
| https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#5.16/41.047...
| S201 wrote:
| I don't have one personally but I did some research into their
| hardware when making a DIY clone a few years ago:
| https://github.com/shanet/clearair
|
| The EPA published a paper calibrating the sensors PurpleAir
| uses with their much more expensive sensors and found it was
| fairly close after applying a correction factor.
| https://github.com/shanet/ClearAir/blob/master/docs/PurpleAi...
| iak8god wrote:
| Very cool project. Do you run your clone device in any kind
| of enclosure?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We maintain an open source, open hardware air quality monitor
| project that is quite popular. We also sell these monitors as
| easy to assemble kits.
|
| One of the monitors is an outdoor monitor similar to the Purple
| Air that uses dual PM sensors for enhanced accuracy. You can
| find more information of the kits here [1] and the built
| instructions including files for schematics, enclosure here
| [2].
|
| [1] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/
|
| [2] https://www.airgradient.com/open-
| airgradient/instructions/di...
| danenania wrote:
| Yes! I was going to post PurpleAir for all you east coast
| wildfire newbies. It has been an essential resource in CA for
| the last few years.
|
| I recommend limiting time outside as much as possible when the
| levels are high, like over 100. You might not notice it at
| first, but over time it can start to make you feel pretty bad--
| coughing, itchy eyes, fatigue, etc. _Especially_ avoid doing
| any kind of vigorous exercise like running or cycling that
| makes you breathe hard. I learned that the hard way.
|
| Also, if it's anything like smoke season in CA, air filters are
| probably back-ordered and sold out at stores, but I recommend
| getting at least one so you have it for next time. They are so
| worth the cost. We have one for each room in our home, but we
| have a young child so we go a bit overboard.
| eunoia wrote:
| I can vouch. Have one at home and use their map as my go to for
| understanding air quality.
|
| I haven't had time to play with it yet, but they have an API
| for the Home Assistant types out there.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| The sun has been giving me sunset colors when it is not even
| close to the horizon
| alexose wrote:
| I'm asking this honestly and in good faith: When do we start
| demanding SO2 injection? How much more of this are we going to
| try to brush off before we decide it's unacceptable?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| What makes you think geoengineering is going to solve more
| problems than it introduces?
| alexose wrote:
| 1) It's been known since at least 2018 that the sudden
| reduction in SO2 pollutants has been contributing to a spike
| in surface warming https://esd.copernicus.org/preprints/esd-2
| 018-83/esd-2018-83...
|
| 2) While imperfect, there is some historical record of how
| this process plays out via volcanic eruptions
|
| 3) SAI is never going to perfectly solve all problems
| associated with carbon pollution. But it doesn't need to be
| perfect-- just better than the alternative.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I don't really doubt the technical side, but what do you
| think will happen when a country proposes SO2 injection?
| It's a global solution to a set of localized issues that
| not all countries face, there will certainly be objection
| from countries who think their atmosphere, climate,
| agriculture will be negatively affected. You can point to
| North American forests and say "look! we must solve this!"
| and other nations would rightly point out that poor
| forestry practices contributed to the issue, and that
| historically much of that forest land would have burned
| with regularity without humanity's help.
|
| I don't see how you could form consensus behind this
| approach. The alternative is world war.
| alexose wrote:
| I'm not sure I subscribe to this argument given that
| countries are already polluting massive amounts of CO2
| (and SO2, until about five years ago), and nobody seems
| to be going to war over it. There are massive issues of
| equity wrapped up in maintaining the status quo as well
| as trying something different.
|
| I would also point out that megafires are not the only
| symptom. Drought, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and sea
| level rise are all driven by a warming planet. Surely
| there is a break even point where it's worth taking on
| additional risk in order to mitigate some of these
| problems.
|
| Getting back to my original question: Where is that
| break-even? Maybe there simply isn't one, and we'd rather
| collectively go down with the ship.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Never. SO2 is an environmental pollutant, is a major cause of
| acid rain, and is toxic for human, animal, and plant health.
| You don't mention the problems that this might solve (less
| incoming solar radiation, maybe?), but purposeful exposure to
| sulfur dioxide is much worse.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's why the proposals are to put it in the stratosphere,
| and one of the big benefits of SO2 versus other chemicals is
| the planet naturally does the same thing during big
| eruptions; we thus have some significant experimental
| evidence on how it degrades and affects ecosystems.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab94eb
| posits that moving off coal as an energy source drops SO4 in
| the atmosphere so precipitously that geoengineering would
| largely just keep it at the current baseline (Figure 1).
| alexose wrote:
| Weighing all things, though, is it worse? Would an increase
| in acid raid outweigh the myriad health concerns over
| wildfire smoke?
|
| I'd rather _not_ pollute the atmosphere on purpose, but I
| find that there 's a moral hazard in not considering all
| possible mitigation strategies. Keeping in mind that those of
| us posting on Hackernews are among the least affected and
| least vulnerable people on the planet.
| perihelions wrote:
| The amounts of *stratospheric* SO2 aerosols needed to alter
| the climate are a very small fraction of extant
| *tropospheric* SO2 pollution. None of those effects would be
| significant.
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