Increased smoke pollution on the horizon for Pacific Northwest

Enlarge / Firefighters from Stockton, California, put out flames off of Hidden Valley Rd. while fighting a wildfire, Friday, May 3, 2013 in Hidden Valley. (credit: Daria Devyatkina / Flickr)

In the western United States, summer 2018 was a bad time for wildfires. In all, according to the government of California, 7,948 separate fires saw 1,975,086 acres burnt to a crisp, 24,226 structures destroyed or damaged, and 100 confirmed deaths. In the following summers, things didn't improve.

New research from a team assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and various universities suggests that, if climate mitigation efforts don't go far enough, summer wildfires will only get worse. In a worst-case scenario, the research said that the problems caused by fires in the Pacific Northwest could result in a tripling of air pollution.

This is the pathway we want to avoid at any cost," Meiyun Lin, one of the authors of the paper and a NOAA researcher, told Ars.

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