Abstract. Fires represent an air quality challenge because they are
large, dynamic and transient sources of particulate matter and ozone
precursors. Transported smoke can deteriorate air quality over large
regions. Fire severity and frequency are likely to increase in the future,
exacerbating an existing problem. Using the National Environmental
Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Hazard Mapping System (HMS)
smoke data for North America for the period 2007 to 2014, we examine a
subset of fires that are confirmed to have produced sufficient smoke to
warrant the initiation of a U.S. National Weather Service smoke forecast. We
find that gridded HMS-analyzed fires are well correlated (r= 0.84) with
emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Inventory Database 4s (GFED4s). We
define a new metric, smoke hours, by linking observed smoke plumes to active
fires using ensembles of forward trajectories. This work shows that the
Southwest, Northwest, and Northwest Territories initiate the most air
quality forecasts and produce more smoke than any other North American
region by measure of the number of HYSPLIT points analyzed, the duration of
those HYSPLIT points, and the total number of smoke hours produced. The
average number of days with smoke plumes overhead is largest over the
north-central United States. Only Alaska, the Northwest, the Southwest, and Southeast
United States regions produce the majority of smoke plumes observed over their own
borders. This work moves a new dataset from a daily operational setting to a
research context, and it demonstrates how changes to the frequency or
intensity of fires in the western United States could impact other regions.
US Trends in Wildfire Smoke derived from NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System Smoke Product and Airport Data from 2010-2020
