Bigger Wildfires Making Air Pollution Worse. Latest Victim: Sydney, Australia

In this image from CNN, the famed Sydney Opera House is barely
visible amid clouds of choking wildfire smoke in the city this week.

Today, here in Vermont, we will be treated to northwest breezes that will pump in chilly but very clean and fresh air from central Canada.

We're lucky, especially if you compare us to, say Sydney, Australia in recent days.

Destructive and very, very big wildfires continue to burn in Australia, and that will continue through their summer, as it appears now.

Some of the big fires are near Sydney, and smoke from those fires is choking this iconic Australian city in a thick, dangerous haze.  In some parts of the city, pollution levels were five times higher than the level considered hazardous, says the Sydney Morning Herald.

That newspaper also reported that there were 150 ambulance calls Monday for people with breathing problems, ferry service was shut down due to poor visibility, and outdoor venues such as swimming pools were closed because the city didn't want people exercising in the pollution.

Firefighters were responding to four times the usual number of false alarms because the smoke was so thick it was seeping into buildings and triggering smoke alarms, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. 

It's early in the summer fire season in Australia and already more than 720 homes have been lost. Officials are warning of exponentially greater losses as the fires chew their way into more populated areas later this summer.

And most of that time, this choking, dangerous smog from the fires will linger over some Australian cities, like Sydney.

This is not a problem limited to Australia. It's a world-wide issue

According to Outside, the bigger wildfires are starting to erase the big gains the United States has made since the 1970s.

There are all kinds of laws and improved emission systems for all kind of vehicles, homes, factories, buildings - what have you. Cities that were routinely smoggy in the 1960s and 1970s routinely have clean air.

However, the wildfires, now getting bigger, hotter, more long lasting and numerous in large part due to climate change, are spewing huge amounts of particulates and other pollution into the atmosphere.

During the worst of the wildfires, weather patterns and winds move the smoke and pollutants into big cities and small towns often hundreds of miles distant from the fires, leading to dangerous spikes in bad air quality.

San Francisco was shrouded in serious haze back in October. Other western North American cities, like Salt Lake City, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, have had very serious smoke attacks from wildfires in recent years.

These outbreaks of thick haze are dangerous for everybody, causing lung damage and cardiovascular injury.  People who already have health issues could be hospitalized, or even die. And it's going to get worse.

Says Outside:

"While the U.S. has done a lot to limite particulate matter from burning fossil fuels, the country is still spewing a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is speeding climate change. That, in turn make wildfires more severe."

To be Captain Obvious here, more severe wildfires mean a lot more smoke pumping into the atmosphere and often traveling long distances.

Don't think for a minute we Vermonters are immune from this wildfire pollution.  You know those fresh, clean northwest breezes I referred to at the top of this post?

Those northwest breezes are not necessarily so fresh in the summer and early autumn. There's been an uptick in wildfires in the northern forests of Canada and even up in the Arctic.  Some of that smoke blows down into the Green Mountain State.

I'm not sure on the statistics, but my perception is certainly that we've had more smoky, hazy and icky summer and early autumn days due to those fires hundreds or even thousands of miles to our north and west.

Wildfire smoke is not just an immediate danger to Sydney, Australia, It appears it will be an increasing threat to all of us.