Hello and welcome to the Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that’s more entertaining than your friends’ instagram stories. Dw we won’t tell them.

Today we’re back talking about forest fires in Canada. If you live on the East Coast of the U.S., you don’t need us to elaborate. If you don’t, let’s get in to it.

New York State of Sky

Last week we covered forest fires in Russia and Canada that have emitted tonnes of CO2 into the environment and burned a million acres in Canada alone, now these fumes have made their way to the East Coast of the U.S..

If there’s anything that can make the impact of these fires feel real, it’s seeing NYC shrouded in red plumes. For a few hours today, New York City had the worst air quality in the world topping New Delhi.

As things stand, Canada has over 400 ongoing forest fires and the smoke from these fires has been moving in to the States over the last month. These plumes of smoke have put 10s of millions of Americans under air quality alerts over the last day.

As a result of the smoke:

• New Yorkers are being encouraged to stay in doors until Friday

• New York’s LaGuardia airport froze flights

• Baseball and Football matches have been postponed

• Public schools have cancelled all outdoor activities

To be clear, while forest fires have long been a challenge, the level of impact this time around is unprecedented.

The last two days have had the higher levels of PM2.5 in New York’s air than any other day since 2006. PM2.5 refers to fine particulate matter emitted from forest fires that can be extremely irritant to the lungs. These particles can cause the body to have inflammatory reactions. In particular, older adults or those with asthma are at risk. We don’t know about you but the Strawman’s done living in unprecedented times.

While it’s likely the impact on the air quality on the East Coast will subside by the end of the week, it’s clear that fires like this are becoming more and more common. May 2023 ranked globally as the second warmest May on record. We hate to be doomers, but this stuff ain’t slowing down - while we figure out how to prevent it, we’ll have to become much better at dealing with it.

Until next time,

The Strawman

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