The State of Maryland Air Quality Science, Policy, Research, and Relevance in Contemporary Times

Smoke from 2023 North American fires has created a quandary for Maryland and other Eastern US States. Even while anthropogenic precursor emissions remain near record lows, episodic air quality experienced during the 2023 summer season was one of the worst on record in Maryland. The state is responsible for developing regulations, policy, and practices to improve and protect air quality, and operationally issues public air quality forecasts and alerts. In short, states wield tremendous actionable power to influence and communicate local and regional air quality with direct implications for the public. Considering this, states such as Maryland rely on strong partnerships to develop scientifically sound and viable policies. For example, state planners need rigorous modeling for policy creation and justification. State air quality forecasters need reliable and consistently available operational products for decision making and public alerts. The State of Maryland has a strong working relationship with nearby institutions with a long record of productive cooperation. Maryland’s collaboration with institutions such as University of Maryland has led to a cleaner atmosphere across the United States, with observed data in Maryland cleaner than all National Ambient Air Quality Standards with more than a 90% decrease in surface ozone exposure, prior to 2023. Now in 2023, Maryland is again on the precipice of federal air quality non-attainment due to wildfire smoke-related ozone enhancements. Treatment of this data requires extensive scientific rigor to exclude in determining regulatory compliance. Furthermore, future modeling of air quality will need to consider the climate impacts to air quality, which are underscored by ‘years of fire’ such as 2023. Cooperation of federal and academic institutions with local and state jurisdictions continues to be of vital importance as the atmospheric composition continues to change in a warming climate. This discussion will review the implications of smoke on air quality policy in Maryland in the context of enormous historical success and highlight the ongoing observational and modeling work of the Maryland-Academic-Federal institutional cooperation.