Why wildfires and their smoke are getting worse

From the Midwest to the Northeast, many in the U.S. have been dealing with the smoke from the record breaking Canadian wildfires for over a month now. Hazy skies have been common and extremely low air quality has occurred in spots. Why is this happening and will it be more common in the future?
Dr. Emily Fischer, an associate professor at Colorado State University and a member of Science Moms, studies how climate change impacts wildfires. She joins the podcast this week to explain why this year's Canadian wildfire season has been so bad and how wildfires and their smoke will behave as the planet continues to warm. She also talks about her research flying in airplanes above wildfires and shares the harrowing story of how she and her family had to flee from the Cameron Peak fire in Colorado in 2020.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Across the Sky, our national Lee Enterprises weather podcast. I'm Matt Holiner, covering weather for Lee’s Midwest news sites and apps from Chicago. But of course, it's not just me. I'm joined by my fellow meteorologist Joe Martucci in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Sean Sublette in Richmond, Virginia. The fourth member of our team Kirsten Lang is also home on maternity leave.
But she'll be back in just a couple of weeks. And we're definitely looking forward to it. Now, for this week's episode, it's something that if you haven't experienced yourself, I'm sure you've heard about it. The Canadian wildfires and all the smoke associated with them. Now, we've been dealing with this story for weeks, but the worse was on Wednesday, June seven, when the Northeast and mid-Atlantic were absolutely covered in smoke and New York City recorded its worst air quality ever.
Now, Joe, you're awfully close to New Jersey, and I know you were impacted as well. So for those of us that weren't there and you describe what that was like. Well, I'll tell you, when my wife said because she works in New York City, it looks like Mars out there in New York, it was orange everywhere. Smell like you wanted to roast a marshmallow.
That you know, that's what she said. Even down by, you know, our office closer to Atlantic City. It was a it looked like a cloudy day out. I mean, like with no sun whatsoever. It looked just like a dark, a dreary day out there. You could still smell the wildfire smoke as well. And you know, if you smell the wildfire smoke, it's kind of already through like those those articles that aren't good for you to breathe in are already getting into your system.
You can smell the wildfire smoke. So. And a New York City in northern well, say north Jersey, we won't get into the central north south Jersey debate, but it was definitely a once in a generation type of area. Yeah, we certainly hope once in a generation because, man, I just saw the pictures and those pictures were just incredible.
I mean, the images that were coming out and I think that's why it just becomes such a national story because you just never had seen these things over New York City, these orange skies. And you're right. I mean, that's what I assumed because the pictures I saw, it really looked like like Mars. It's like, whoa, we've seen pictures like this from California before and in Colorado.
But up in the Northeast like to see these images. It was it was pretty incredible. So I can imagine it was a it was quite the experience. Yeah, definitely. Quite. Did you experience anything? We get into this in the show, but yeah, it's really been about, you know, five, six weeks of it at least. Wildfire smoke in the sky might not be smelling it every day, but it's just been persistent here across the area.
Yeah. And you know, well, we we just wanted to dive into all of this deeper so, you know, why are Canada's wildfires so bad this year? Why has so much of the smoke ended up over the U.S.? What are the short term and long term impacts from this smoke exposure? And, you know, we found the perfect guests for this episode helps answer all our questions.
Dr. Emily Fischer from Colorado State University. She's an atmospheric chemist who studies wildfire smoke, and she's even flown over wildfires to collect samples of. So it was a great conversation and one we'll bring you right after this break.
Welcome back, everyone, to the Across the Sky podcast. Our guest this week is Dr. Emily Fischer, an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on how climate change is affecting wildfires and the impact of wildfire smoke on people. She's also a member of Science Moms, an organization of climate scientists and mothers.
We're helping other moms better understand climate change. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia, a master's degree from the University of New Hampshire, Ph.D. from the University of Washington. And we are thrilled to have her on the show. Dr. Fischer, welcome across the sky. Thanks so much for having me, Matt. And so as we do with all our guests, I'd like to start by asking you what got you interested in whether what made you want to start studying the atmosphere and specifically how it interacts with wildfires?
I have been interested in the weather from the time I was a child. I was ten when Hurricane Bob came through Rhode Island. I'm originally from the East Coast, though. I live in Colorado now, and I was fascinated, impressed, amazed at the ability to predict something like that and to and to prepare for that level of a natural disaster.
And I was a kid who I mean, I called my local weatherman, who was John GLASSIE, and I feel like I should reach out to John Garcia and tell him, look, it turned out I got a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, but he called me back. He was on air when I called, Right. And I asked him what made wind.
So I've just been fascinated in the atmosphere and I care deeply about air quality. And I think we all have issues that we care about and we don't always control what things we care about. Some of us are interested right, in health care, access to health care, and some of us are interested in environmental issues and some of us are interested in animals like.
And I just happen to care about air quality. And so as soon as I figured out that that was a thing that I could study, you know, as I started as an undergraduate, I never looked back. So and then if you spend any time living in the western U.S., fires are a thing. And I like to work on projects that have a global relevance, but a local component.
And I think that really helps me understand them more deeply. So I, I experienced the phenomenon. I have sort of this local understanding of how it's impacting people and it's sort of connected to a broader picture. So fires fall in that category. And some of the other things that I work on also fall in that category. There they stand this local to national to international space.
But, you know, if you live in in the West, anywhere you're going to interact with fires and smoke. And it it's a thing that will draw your attention. Yeah. And I know most of your research on wildfires has been focused in the United States, but of course, this time they're occurring in Canada and having impacts here in the U.S. So, you know, what can you tell us about why the fires in Canada this year have been so much worse than in previous years?
So this year it comes down to aridity or dryness. And so it has just been very dry. Wildfires are very responsive to environmental conditions. And so just imagine tossing a match into a dry brown fire of old versus tossing that match into a well-watered lawn. Right. And or a snow covered area. And so if you have a very dry, dry conditions, that's exactly what will lead to the chance of wildfires.
And then it's just a matter of whether you have an ignition source and leads show here. So I am in New Jersey. Yes. And a couple of Wednesdays ago, we had New Jersey turning into more. For some reason or another, it's orange everywhere, at least in the northern half and state with the wildfire smoke. New York City, you still have the worst air quality in the world.
Where I am in South Jersey. It wasn't quite orange, but it was very, very easy. And it has been really since the middle of May, both with Alberta wildfires. And then what's happening in Quebec and Ontario, in Nova Scotia here, I guess that is 360 view like what actually caused the smoke to recede? Unprecedented levels, you know, in the northeast, because it's not like we haven't seen wildfire smoke before, at least here in northeast.
There's a few issues and one is the fires that are occurring are large and they're so large, some of them, that they're creating their own weather right there. These are big, big, big wildfires and fires that are that large. They create very, very dense amounts of smoke. So much so that when you fly through them and maybe we'll talk about this earlier, I mean, you can't see anything, right?
It's it's ten times as dense as what you saw experiencing have experienced in New Jersey. There's been just very efficient transport of the smoke to these populated areas in the northeast. And it's new for to the northeast, but it's not new for the western cities. So San Francisco, Seattle have been experiencing these kinds of smoke filled conditions quite frequently over the last couple of years.
And it's just a matter of when the wildfire is extremely active. The winds just happen to push that smoke in a certain direction at that level of the atmosphere. And so the, you know, faster and more efficient and more narrow, that smoke plume is the more concentrated it's going to be when it gets to its receptor region, which, you know, was your neighborhood this time.
So that's as simple as it is. And the smoke from wildfires is injecting in various levels of the atmosphere throughout the day in the early morning. And, you know, overnight it's injecting lower in the atmosphere as it grows throughout the day, it tends to inject higher. But if you have conditions where that smoke, you know, mixes back down into the lower atmosphere, you can get, you know, really concentrated plumes moving very efficiently and and at all levels of the atmosphere, actually.
So so, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry. I have family in New Jersey, too. So. So I feel your pain. Well, apology accepted. So it's no problem there. But yeah, it was definitely a generation, you know, this type of event for us here. I wanted to ask one brief follow show. I know you're going to ask, but I just wanted to, you know, ask in May.
So we hear the wildfire smoke in bay, but it wasn't as hazy. And then, you know, early June came and it became a lot thicker. Would you be able to just talk about the differences between what we saw in May as opposed to what we, you know, the more notable world wide event that happened in early June when it's more concentrated, you're receiving smoke that's fresher, more dense, and you're getting it a more direct a direct transport pathway.
And I think because I wasn't there at all during that more recent event, you were even able to smell the smoke, right? Yeah, you are absolutely right. Yeah. And then a few months maybe it's just a few weeks ago, months ago, a month and a half ago, the prior smoke event. Right. You couldn't smell it. Right, Right. Yeah, right, exactly.
Yeah. So the compounds in smoke that you can smell, they have a lifetime of about a day. So when you can smell the smoke, it's often more concentrated and fresher. And when you can't smell the smoke, but you see that haze, it usually just means it's been processed in the atmosphere for over a day. So it's it's taken longer than a day to get to you.
And if something is taking longer to get to you, there's also more opportunities for dilution, for deposition, for for the things that are in smoke to come out. And so that's really the difference between those those two events is, is the distance. And I sort of duration of time that passed between the fire and the smoke coming to your neighborhood.
Yeah. And to follow up about the transport of that particulate matter, as Joe knows, and most of us in the weather field know, the the upper level winds or the steering winds were kind of unusual for this time of the year anyway, which is part of the reason the smoke got got this far south. Even here where I was in Virginia, we had a fair bit not as thick as in the Northeast, but we got some here.
And as you mentioned, this is something that is much more common in the western United States. Can I get you also to speak a little bit more about how this does fall back in to the warming climate? Oftentimes, I hear that, well, somebody started a fire, but I try to remind people and you jump in, if I'm a little off base here, that the the origin of the fire isn't isn't the important thing.
I mean, it's not that it's not important, but the conditions of the land that surround it will really govern how much how fast it spreads and how far it spreads. So can I get you to riff on that just a little bit? Is that kind of kind of the right idea? Yes, on you're totally right. And in fact, my group has has worked on this and I can talk a little bit about that.
So I'm not with Canadian fires, but with wildfires in the western U.S. and in the southeastern United States is where we've specifically focused on this link. And other other people have worked in Canada. And and so in general, you can look back at our fire records over the last 30, 40 years and that interannual variability and burn area is linked to environmental conditions.
And which environmental condition is most important depends on the ecosystem. So in some places it is the precipitation that is the best explainer that we have of that year's burn area and other places. It is the aridity that that best explains in the Rocky Mountains, where I live, that interannual variability and burn area is really very tightly linked to our our aridity and so we have also looked at this as a function of ignition source and human started fires and lightning started fires both they're there year to year burn area that they produce the sort of severity and extent of the fires that are started by both of those ignition sources, lightning or human ignition
sources, they vary with environmental conditions. So you are absolutely right. It's it's not net it's not the ignition source. Right. That we are priming the environment or conditions that will facilitate large fires. And so as we look forward with climate change and I mean, climate change is happening right now also. But one thing we know very well is that temperatures will continue to rise.
And one thing the second thing that we know very well over North America is that in general it will be drier. And so that just that alone will facilitate more periods of time where large fires could occur. And and yes, so it's interesting, you know, in the West, there's been a lot of work, right, to educate people about fire safety and and to be careful with ignition sources, but particularly in in certain times of year.
And probably more work needs to happen in, you know, other parts of the world where where typically we haven't been so vulnerable to fires. Yeah. It's not what we want to hear. We talk about climate change and how we could be seeing more of these types of events. And what I want to dive into now is, is some of your research because it sounds really cool.
I know some of it is involved actually flying over wildfires to sample the smoke. So can you tell us about this and what is actually snow smoke made out of? That's kind of a key question. What are the components that are actually in wildfire smoke? Sure. So in 2018, I led what was at that time the one of the largest yield missions in atmospheric chemistry to study wildfires.
And we worked with the National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research, C-130 research aircraft. And so we filled that research aircraft with so many different instruments. It was like a flying chemistry lab. And we took that facility and we visited more than 20 different, very large wildfires. And if you remember, 2018 was a very active wildfire year.
So we're talking about like the Carr Fire, the Mendocino complex, some of these really, really big wildfires. And so what we would do was go behind the wildfire or upwind of the fire and see what was happening and figure out the background atmosphere that the smoke was, that the fire was injecting the smoke into. And then we would come around downwind of the the fire and we would as soon as it was safe.
So outside of the updraft, you know, these are large fires They're making very large, very large updrafts. We would turn the plane directly into the smoke, directly into the outflow, and then we would go out the other side. And it's like many minutes pass. It's a little unnerving. It smells like you can't see anything. It's very red. It's very eerie.
As a parent of small children, I was like, What am I doing right now? Why am I doing this? And then you come out the other side, you know that, get a sample of that, the air on the other side, and go right back in. And we we mow the lawn or shoveled the snow, I guess is the time of year where you'd mow the lawn, mow the lawn through the smoke plume.
And we we did that again and again and again to understand how the smoke changes in that very, very close to the fire in that first couple hours and really understand what's happening and what's what's in the smoke. So what's in smoke? It is a very complex mixture of gases and particle jets. And so the fine particulates are very different than a typical urban air pollution mixture.
They are generally what we call organic carbon. So these are chemical compounds with urban carbon bonds. It's a we don't have perfect characterization of of chemically of exactly all of that, but most of the aerosol has organic carbon and then you have a lot of carbon containing gases. So there's lots of carbon monoxide, for example, anytime you have incomplete combustion.
So there's a lot of carbon monoxide, there's a lot of carbon dioxide, there are a lot of what we would think of as hazardous air pollutants. So things like formaldehyde, benzene, these are all organic compounds that you don't really want to be breathing. Those are in there. There's also quite a few nitrogen containing compounds is nitrogen in the wood and in the material that's being burnt.
And so that's what my team studies. So so that's what smoke is made out of. And it every single one of those compound, every single one of those chemicals, they all interact differently with sunlight and with water. So they have different solubility, they have different deposition rates, they have different what we call fatalis rates are how quickly they're broken down by sunlight.
They react differently with other compounds in the smoke. And so it's a very interesting mixture. It's very chemically active, particularly in the first couple of hours. And then some of the chemistry slows down with with time as it and it becomes it's ever evolving because it's going from concentrations concentrated to dilute and that that will change the composition a little bit too because it changes the chemistry.
Does that help? Yes, I figured it was going to be a little bit more complex than we think. I know there are a lot of different elements that make up smoke, but also when you were describing flying through the smoke, it reminded me a lot of some of the hurricane hunters that we've had on this podcast. It's been very similar going back and forth through the hurricane, back and forth, through the wildfire smoke.
And honestly, I think kind of just as scary as well. That would be a pretty nerve wracking experience. I'm not sure I'd be up for that, actually. But I mean, these are wonderful pilots, very safe activity. I would say. It just feels it feels like you shouldn't be doing it. And, you know, we're very careful not to interfere with the firefighting teams and the firefighting teams aren't trying to fly in the smoke where you can't see anything.
So it it it's you know, there's lots of aircraft around wildfires. And the key thing for us was to stay out of the way of the firefighters. But, you know, you you operate in very safe conditions. You're you know, you remain 2000 feet above the ground. And and because you can't see anything, so you don't want to run into Mount St Helens, for example.
So so but it it yeah, it was unnerving for me, but I don't think the pilots were nervous. The other thing that we did on that field program, which was really difficult but so fascinating, was try to sample smoke cloud mixtures. So in those cases we would be looking for these. I know this is a weather podcast, so I'll just get it into a tiny bit of detail here.
There were these beautiful cumulus fields, right? And we would go sample the smoke under them and then move up into these little puffy clouds and try to collect the cloud droplets. So we were taking the plane and going zooming cloud to cloud. And, you know, I was in the cockpit. So not getting as sick as I would have gotten.
I always medicate on these planes, but the back of the plane was definitely getting sick. But it was kind of amazing to, you know, try to capture the cloud particles that were impacted by smoke. Yeah. Just one other thing that you can do while you're up there in the smoke and take advantage of it and sample the clouds as well.
Okay. Well, we're going to take a quick break, but coming up, we're going to chat more about wildfires, smoke and the impacts of climate change is having on them. So don't go anywhere. More across the sky in just a bit.
Welcome back to the Across the Sky podcast. Everyone released new episodes every Monday on all our early news sites and apps, but also on all podcast platforms. And we even have a new YouTube channel. So really, wherever you like to get your podcast, you can find us there. We're back with Dr. Emily Fischer from Colorado State University chatting about wildfires and smoke.
And Emily, one of the things that came up in my research for this episode is that you and your family actually had to flee from the Cameron Peak fire while backpacking in 2020. Now, I assume is pretty scary. So can you describe that experience? So 2020, right. The pandemic summer, we were looking for things to do with the kids we had.
We had taken them to Rocky Mountain National Park a few weeks prior and had this great backpacking experience. So we, you know, kind of at the last minute said, let's go up near Cameron Peak, because that's just a little bit to the north of where I live. And so we we camped out one night and the next morning we got up and my kids were very whiny and we didn't make it that far.
So we had, you know, we stopped a little early for lunch and I said, okay, we can just sit and paint or do something if if you guys don't feel like walking very far. And so we sat down by a tree to have lunch and I came, you know, stood up after lunch and there was a big bubble, big bubble on the back side of Cameron Peak.
And I just looked at my husband. I was like, That's not a cloud like that. That's not a cloud. And I know that because in 2018 I had been flying all over the place looking at many wildfires, knows that we have to go now. And so we had to make a very quick decision of whether we were going uphill, which would have meant we had to have to cross like ten, 11,000 feet with the kids or to go back down the way we came.
And so we just grabbed our children's hands and we ran out. And my daughter, who's eight now, was five at the time, and she ran six and a half miles and about two and a half hours. And it was this. Thankfully, the smoke was running parallel to us so we could see the massive plume. And I didn't know what was going to happen.
Right. I mean, but we did make it out. But there was no we were we were about between one and two miles from the start of the of the fire. And when we got out, the Rangers, they the fire didn't have a name. Right. So I like finally get out. We get out. I turn the key of the car over to make sure everything's going to be okay.
Kids in the car, I tell them, you can start crying now like you can. You can do whatever you need to do now, because it had been, you know, a few hours of like, here's a saver. You get one sip of water, watch your ankles, no talking, right. Just just running, running out. And they and this is quite rugged terrain where this is and that you could tell because it was very hard to fight this fire.
And so we got out and I was like, what's the name of the fire? And the fire had no name. And actually the pictures that my husband took were used by the the Forest Service and some of their investigative work about the cause of the fire. And so so the Cameron Peak fire turned into at that time, Colorado's largest.
And it just you know, I watched that every incident management report every single night for that. And it burns, you know, right through in October. And it basically burned until it snowed. And so we it started in August and it just continued on. And that smoke was sort of covering Fort Collins. And it would was just very smoky here.
There was ash falling on us all the time and your 2020. So you could really only be with people outside. So we were sitting, you know, in the backyard with my brother, just like ash falling on us. And it's like what the world says so dark. And so that summer one, my kids are quite traumatized. It's very hard to get them out hiking now unless it's actively raining.
And so actually, I'm going to come to the East Coast this summer and I'm excited to take them a little bit to the New Hampshire mountains and sort of introduce them to hiking again in a non-Western way where the sort of threats are smaller. But I also that summer, like lived my grass, right? So I had a student at the time I actually had coffee with this morning, Steve Bry, and he had been working on the link between climate and wildfires.
And, you know, summer 2020 was incredibly dry and it was not surprising that from August to September we had an extreme fire season here. And so I felt like I was living in those graphs. I felt like I understood those calculations. And in a much deeper way. And I would, you know, honestly cry some days that summer because I was like, this is what climate change feels like.
This is what this feels like. And at the same time, there was some really great work happening to try to understand the return cycle for events like that and that maybe 6 to 8 years. And that's a horrible type summer to have every six years. So, so I feel like that experience. Yeah, it helped me understand fires and their impacts in a in a new way, in a very nonacademic, nonacademic way and also kind of taught me and it inspired some of my more recent work to think about how we communicate about wildfires so that people can protect themselves and their loved ones and they're sort of vulnerable members of their family.
When smoke comes to town. So. So yeah, that's what that experience was like. Not great. I'm happy everybody was okay. It's certainly possible that we wouldn't have been had the winds been different. Yeah, that is absolutely harrowing. And so congratulations on on getting out with the kids and that they were all right. My kids are 24 and 20 now, so that's no longer an issue, but better communication.
And you talking about coming back here to the East Coast to do some hiking, is there a way or have you found any kind of good way to communicate what that risk is like in the western United States for people who have not been there? Obviously, we had this big, big plume of smoke in the northeast a few weeks ago.
Would you say like, yeah, this is what we deal with all the time? Or would you say like you know, this is something that we're accustomed to all the time? How do you kind of convey the risk and what you what you contend with there in the West United States versus someplace that is, you know, in the east, it as a more a more humid climate and tends to be more forested in the first place.
Well, there's a few things to think about with respect to this general question. And the first one is, while I do not want to diminish the risk of these fires and my family has run from a wildfire, and there's incredibly sad loss of life and property associated with wildfires. So I do not want to diminish that. But more people are impacted by the wildfire smoke and the health impacts are driven by the smoke because just the sheer number of people that are impacted by smoke is much larger.
And so as you think about preparing for wildfires, that preparation really needs to happen across the U.S. with respect to the wildfire smoke, because the fire seasons are bad, fire seasons are very severe fire seasons. The frequency of them is going to increase. Unfortunately, and that's due to climate change and a legacy of land management decisions. And so we have to invest in our forests and work on preventing further climate change in order to address that.
So we have to prepare for more smoke. And so preparing for more smoke will look different depending on your work and your home and your lifestyle. And whether you have someone in that is you yourself are sort of a member of a vulnerable group or not. So vulnerable groups are people with preexisting respiratory and cardiovascular issues and or the very young or the elderly and so in my family I have an older house, but I have a portable AC unit that I'm ready if the smoke comes so that I can close the windows and have it not be blazing hot.
And I have a number of air filters that are ready to go and I don't need them all the time. But I have a sort of kit, the like now wildfire smoke is coming Kit and I would encourage families to do that. And in fact, my mom in Rhode Island, I she was hit by smoke. And, you know, she's funny.
She's like, I have the windows open. And I was like, nope, no, no, you don't like close those up. And I'm in the ship. Use some air filters and this is how you're going to make yourself a clean air space in case those winds shift that plume a little bit further north. Because at the time it was just a little bit in southern Rhode Island and was more to the south.
So I think sort of working with people so that they know what to do and how to protect themselves and whether they need to protect themselves is what we actually need to do, because the smoke is not going anywhere. It's coming more and more. Emily, changing gears a little bit here, you might tell us a little bit about more of the work you do with science moms here and where people find more information about it.
Sure. Science Moms is a group of scientists who are also mothers. All of us work on some something tied to climate change. So for me, that's why my work on wildfires, which are very tightly linked to climate change. And so what we're aiming to do is in a nonpartisan and we're not politicians, right? Most of us many of us are academics, nonpartisan way explain the fundamentals of climate change and help mothers understand what this issue means for their families, for their children, and also to give them confidence to speak out about the issues.
So you don't have to understand every little bit about climate science in order to understand that this is, you know, one of the most important issues of our time. And we absolutely have to take action now. We have about ten years to do a what needs to be done to slow this thing down. So so that's what science moms is.
And we're trying to offer information on fires, on drought, on all the way to what do I do in my own home, to decarbonize it. We're offering, you know, all of that in one sort of space for mothers. And so you can find out about that at science moms dot com and there's videos of me and my colleagues, you know trying to explain things and trying to offer helpful advice and we, you know, showcase some of technologies too, and show how we use them.
For me, like I'm a big fan of the E-bike that reduces my transportation and car carbon use substantially. So kind of show that and how we might go about that. So I even have done some videos on how do you call somebody that represents you and what are the things that you can say if you are concerned about climate change and its impact on your kids?
And and so those are that those are the kinds of things that we're doing in it in an educational sense. Yeah, I really like the stuff that comes out of science on I'll do great work, you know, And as we wrap up here, you know, I'm sure being involved with science lives, but also your research, you know, people come to you, you know, and trying to understand it a little bit better.
So when somebody comes to you and they're and they're worried about the future and climate change and the impact it's going to have on wildfires, you know what? What do you tell them? You know, you try and relax them because it is a stressful thing. We talk about climate change because there's so much negativity around it and we think about all the bad things that can happen.
But what's kind of a silver lining that you see to trying to help relax people and focus on solutions and what we can do to help mitigate the risk if we're going to see increased wildlife or what kind of stuff can we do to handle that situation. You know, what is your response to somebody who's feeling a little uneasy?
How can you hopefully make people feel a little bit a little bit more relaxed? Yeah, I think it helps to just work on the issue. So and there's a very hands up. You feel better once you start working on something that that applies to everything, right? Sometimes starting the job is the hardest piece of doing something right. So so, you know, I'm telling them to do what they can do.
So that might be share information about climate change, swap things in their home and speak up to people that represent them. And then I am also telling them that there is there is. Oh, right. So we caused this problem. We understand what the solutions are and we have the technical capacity to change the way we produce and use energy.
And so we just need the will to do that. And so there I think things could be much worse if we didn't know how to solve the problems. Right. But but we actually know how to solve the problem. We just have to decide. And so I encourage people to put that pressure on people that represent them at all levels of government, because that is one of the most important things that you can do.
And it's very, very important and it's something that anyone can do. So, yes, it's the only thing, you know, I would say if you have children, be careful about how you talk about climate change to children. With my own kids, I tell them this isn't a weight that you have to carry right now. This is an adult problem and I'm working on it.
And that is helps to reduce the anxiety in my house that that I'm not ignoring it. Right. I'm not pretending it's not an issue. And these are these are the ways that I'm working on this issue. So so those are those are my little pieces of advice I would give you. Yeah, I think that's great advice, you know, and focus on the solutions rather than I think you can.
It's easy to focus on all the negativity and then focus on the worry about all the bad, but like are things we can do and focusing on what can we do that actually you can turn that anxiety a little bit into positive outcome and maybe actually lead to a solution to this big problem. Well, and this has been a great conversation, but where can people find out more about your research and size bombs?
So I'm in the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University. I'm the only Emily professor there, so it's easy to find me there. And you can find out more about science moms at science moms dot com in that building YouTube videos and Instagram and all the ways that you can follow that. Awesome. I'm sure people will definitely be expecting that out.
Well and we thank you so much for joining the podcast and hopefully we can have you back on again soon. I would love to. This has been really fun. Great. Well, going to take one more quick break, but we're going to be back with some closing thoughts in just a second. So stay tuned. More across the sky. I mean, and we're back on across the sky.
And I can say I have a better understanding of how wildfires and wildfire smoke work after that conversation. Guys, what about you? Yeah, for for me just to hear that harrowing tale of her having to pick up the kids and literally run for hours to get out of the way of this thing in northern Colorado really puts it all into perspective.
And the important thing here to remember, I think sometimes we forget, we focus on the fires themselves so often and the flames. But it's the smoke, which I think so many of us saw, because a couple of weeks ago that is far more pervasive and does more long term damage and affects more people in terms of health impacts.
I think that's the other thing. We we need to be cognizant of, even if we don't live in an area that is especially close to two fires in and of themselves. And I just, you know, keep going back to her story that she had in Colorado when she was backpacking through there with their kids. I mean, you have kids, her her husband running, you know, away from the fire.
And I you know, like she said, it was the biggest fire in Colorado's history. I mean, you know, that's something I lose a deer for a while. And she definitely made mention of that. Yeah, That was, you know, really a great story. And just the you know, the kind of take away for me is that, you know, after we dealt with what we saw over the Northeast, but again, we've been dealing with it in the Midwest as well, just all the talk, it just seems like, you know, never at this level.
We're talking about so many days with the hazy skies and the reduced air quality. But now, unfortunately, it looks like that's that's where we're headed. These things are becoming more common, whether it's in the West or up in Canada is the conditions for wildfires, because the weather is getting more extreme. The conditions that cause wildfires, again, we've seen these things are becoming more common.
So this is just one more thing we have to add to the list of things that we need to be prepared for and things we need to be working on. Solutions for, which actually ties back into last week's episode. We really want to thank you, our listeners, for checking out last week's episode, which was all about climate change solutions with Project Drawdown.
Dr. Kate Marble And we actually did get some listener feedback on that episode, including an email from Steve who wrote More Electric Cars, High speed Trains and nuclear energy, as well as sealing methane, sources will cut most of the greenhouse gas emissions. All this needs to be done ASAP. We cannot wait for everyone to get on board. Tomorrow is not soon enough and see if I couldn't agree with you more.
So thank you for the email and if you have a comment about the show or have a weather question you'd like us to answer, send us an email at podcasts at Lee Dot Net Podcasts at we dot net. Or if you'd like to hear your voice on the podcast, fix a voicemail by calling 60927270996092727099. We'd love to hear from you.
And finally, before we wrap up, it is almost here perhaps the most anticipated episode of The Cross the Sky yet the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. And I can't believe I just said the joke. You've been hyping this one for weeks, so I'm going to give you one more chance here. Why do people need to do it in?
If you love hot dogs, if you love New York City, if you love America, you'll love this episode. I love you, Joe Martucci. God bless you, brother. It's going to be great, George. George's great. Tremendous. Yes. If you see him up there on stage, you know, he's all energy. He was much more, you know, what shall we say, preparing, you know, definitely a little more subdued, which is a good thing, Not a bad thing.
A good thing as we go into the hot dog eating contest, he's definitely saving up his energy for the fourth. So check it out. I think Sean is going to be absent from that episode. That's what I heard. I might take that one off. You like Hot Dog Shore? I do. I do. But I. I prefer bratwurst because I can enjoy it a little bit longer.
No offense to Nathan. He makes a great hot dog and all, but I prefer the Johnsonville stuff, which I think is made up by you there. Matt, About the Johnsonville brats, the John Civil rights. Very good. They are very tasty. Well, maybe there was a brat eating contest. You know, we talked about I think it was an ad eating contest.
There are other eating contests that are going to discuss in this episode. So it's going to be an experience. I hope you join in. This will be probably certainly our most unique episode of Across US Yet. But for now, that's going to do it for this week's episode of Across the Sky. If you like the show, please give us a rating or poster review on your favorite podcasting platforms and episodes out.
Then of course, we appreciate the Love War we enterprises and my fellow meteorologist Joe Martucci, Atlantic City, and Sean Sublette in Richmond. I'm Matt Oliver in Chicago. Thanks for listening, everyone. Have a great week and we'll catch you again real soon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.