An Observational and HYSPLIT Modeling Study on the Impacts of Summer 2023 Canadian Wildfire Smoke on Air Quality across the United States

During the first week of June 2023, the northeastern region of the United States experienced a historical (unprecedented?) smoke event that not only blanketed most of the region, but eventually most of the country experienced some ramification of smoke and haze. This hazy smoke, due to fires originating in Quebec, Canada, not only negatively affected the air quality of Canadian residents, but U.S. citizens as well. Simultaneously, northeast U.S. residents were exposed to a significant increase in PM2.5, ozone concentrations, and a number of other atmospheric pollutants found in the wildfire smoke. In addition to poor air quality, observations include visibility impairment (the brief phenomenon of yellow skies in New York City) and health risks that temporarily put a halt to everyday human activities (i.e. Yankees game cancellation). The Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model was executed (employed) to simulate the transport of smoke emissions and quantify the long-range smoke dispersion through back trajectory from Howard University’s Beltsville campus between the dates of June 5th, 2023, to June 9th, 2023.

The wildfires that ferociously burned the entire duration of summer 2023 throughout Canada were bigger and more intense than ever recorded in history. Wildfires have become a (increasingly) more persistent problem we see globally. In recent years, they have been exacerbated by climate change and wildfire prevention and emergency management have worked overtime to alleviate the growing problem by being proactive and reactive. Due to our rapidly changing environment, wildfires are projected to only get worse necessitating revamped and evolved management strategies.