Thick smoke from wildfires billowing from Canada prompted unhealthy air quality alerts across the United States on Friday, fueling concern for this weekend’s World Cup final outside New York.
Detroit and Chicago posted air quality index readings in the “dangerous” range, with the IQAir tracker saying they were the most polluted cities in the world.
Winds moving south meant the capital Washington was also hit hard, ranking second highest “very unhealthy” on the index, when authorities urge all people to avoid unnecessary outdoor activities.
In neighboring New York and New Jersey, where Sunday’s final will be played in an outdoor stadium, the metro area was experiencing “unhealthy” air conditions as smog on Thursday made the Manhattan skyline barely visible.
National Weather Service forecasters warned that “smoke may thicken again overnight into Saturday morning.”
“What we should start to see is a return of northwesterly winds over the Great Lakes, and that’s going to pick up some of that smoke and push it northeast,” Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist for the NWS, told AFP.
But he said forecasts do not predict air quality Sunday in the northeastern US to be as bad as it has been during the week.
“The amount of really thick smoke that we’re seeing, we shouldn’t necessarily see that kind of smoke” during the game, he said, even if hazy skies persist.
“I don’t believe that should be as impactful as if you could play a game today.”
The weekend’s rain could also help soften the worst of the smoke, said Mark Parrington, a scientist at the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.
“We just have to see if those fires continue at the same rate,” he told AFP.
In cities across the Midwest and Northeast, people wore masks outside to filter out the dangerous air. In New York, libraries and train stations were handing them out for free.
The upper Midwest closest to the fires was especially hard hit, with parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin all recording air quality readings deep into the “hazardous” range for days.
The NWS extended the Chicago air quality alert until Friday, adding that “fire smoke may return tomorrow evening and continue into Sunday.”
– The climate change link –
Advocates have highlighted the link between repeated episodes of wildfire smoke and climate change.
“Smoggy skies increasingly underscore the importance of a rapid transition to clean energy instead of building more polluting fossil fuel infrastructure that further contributes to climate change,” said Paul Mathewson, science program director at Clean Wisconsin, among states that have seen a sharp increase in smoggy days in recent years.
Parrington told AFP that climate change is providing conditions for a longer fire season, with higher surface air temperatures and lower soil moisture.
So, he explained, “when there’s a flare, we see these continuous, large-scale burns where these fires can burn for weeks and weeks at a time during the summer.”
Fires were worsening Friday in Canada, where more than 200 fires were burning out of control, particularly in Ontario, according to authorities there.
The damage remains far off the pace of 2023, Canada’s worst fire season on record, when about 18 million hectares burned across the country.
But the intensity has escalated rapidly over the past week, with nearly 2.8 million hectares burned since the start of the year, according to the latest government figures.
As of last Friday, that figure was about 1.6 million hectares.
The fires in Ontario have caused no casualties and some remote communities have been evacuated.
