
Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy - luu
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/09/smoke-has-caused-temperature-forecasts.html
======
dghughes
I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the
sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The
fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can
go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too.

I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen,
and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of
him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and
developing covid-19.

~~~
hguant
>I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen,
and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of
him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and
developing covid-19

Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some
serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a
number of models, cost is between 150-270 USD, depending on the size/amount of
air you want moved.

~~~
Qub3d
The University of Michigan made an instructional video showing how you can
easily make an air purifier out of a box fan and a HEPA-rated furnace filter
for $25:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH5APw_SLUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH5APw_SLUU)

It won't be as good as a purpose-built machine, but it will be far better than
nothing at all.

TheWirecutter found it reduced particulate matter in a room by 87%, if you do
it right. They also make clear important caveats about this method -- in
short, this works in a pinch, but probably should not be used in place of a
purpose-built filter if you want one for year-round use.
[https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-
purifier...](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-
purifier/#what-if-you-just-put-a-furnace-filter-on-a-box-fan)

~~~
ALittleLight
I have two of these running right now. According to my air quality meter, PM
2.5 has fallen from about ~250 indoors to ~40. (My meter shows ~600 outside,
which is about 3x what the government website shows for my area)

~~~
koolba
What do you use to measure air quality?

~~~
ALittleLight
I use this thing:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0787Z5DK9](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0787Z5DK9)

I'm not sure how accurate it is or isn't. It reacts to the filters, for
example, or if I hold it in front of the filter it'll reach a very low number,
conversely if I take it to other parts of the house or outside it'll increase.
I've done a few trials like that and it seems directionally accurate, but I
can't speak to the numerical accuracy.

It measures PM 2.5 and 10 and has a button to show graphs over time for ~12
hours. Battery life is pretty good, I usually leave it detecting on the
charger, but I've had it in handheld mode for several hours and stayed above
80%. It's super simple to use.

One thing I don't like about it is that it has a cheap plastic hinge that is
supposed to let it stand up, but it broke on me after a couple uses. It
doesn't seem to matter though if it's standing up or laying down, it still
reads pretty much the same.

I wish it had a way to export data to my computer or maybe an app.

------
kirillzubovsky
Yup. It's been a fun weekend. Everyone in the family is feeling the cabin
fever, but outside (Bellevue, WA) smells like inside of a fireplace. We put a
few boxed fans with HEPA filters around the house and they are now black. In
hindsight, should've bought more filters, but all the stores and Amazon are
sold out for the near future.

Speaking about the future, this puts planning in perspective. With the climate
changing, remote work, covid and all, the way we live in the next 20 years
might look somewhat different than past 50. The new "American Dream" might be
a tiny condo with great AC, minimal footprint, solar energy and rain water
storage...etc.

It's a good time to ponder what the real estate and living of the future could
look like!

~~~
bfuclusion
I use these guys to have them shipped. Comes in a few days, but this is going
to last a while [https://www.secondnature.com/](https://www.secondnature.com/)

~~~
kiddico
I realize that air filters are the perfect candidate for a subscription
service... but it's just insane the that every product in existence has a
business prepared to ship some of it to you monthly.

~~~
kelnos
Even with filters, it annoys me from an environmental perspective that the
default flow leads you into having them ship you the exact number of filters
your house needs, every two months.

Do filters have a shelf life? If not, or if it's sufficiently long, I'd rather
they just send me six filters once a year, instead of one every two months, or
something like that. I get that some people might not have enough storage
space to pre-order like that, but it's otherwise completely unnecessary to
send one at a time.

(The only plus I can think of to the one-at-a-time model is that getting a new
one in the mail is a nice reminder to replace the filter. But I also have this
thing called a "calendar" that I can use.)

~~~
bfuclusion
You can totally do the six filters once a year, that's how I usually do it,
but the smoke is destroying filters pretty quickly. If you want minimal brain
power, getting them every 3-months (or what your normal cycle is) is fairly
optimal, since getting new filter === time to change the filter.

------
dthal
This blog post went up on Saturday, September 12. It says:

>> MUCH cleaner air will push in by 4 PM Sunday over the coastal zone and will
just reach Seattle late in the afternoon

>> By 1 AM Monday, air quality will be hugely better in western Washington

As of now (Tuesday) there is no sign of clearing. Here in Seattle we are still
in the "very unhealthy" range for AQI.

~~~
lacker
Yeah, the weather forecasts for air quality have been quite inaccurate. Since
Friday, the projections for Oakland CA have constantly been, “it’ll clear up
in the next 24 hours.” Only now, Tuesday morning, has the AQI dropped below
100.

It seems like it’s just a harder problem than regular weather forecasting.
Nobody has much experience with giant smoke clouds like this one. So I can
forgive the weather service some inaccuracy. Just don’t rely on the AQI
forecasts for much.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I've found the HRRR experimental smoke models to be quite good. It's a bit
cumbersome to use, but good enough for 18H forecasts

[https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/](https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/)

~~~
cmason
In my experience these have been completely wrong recently for my neck of the
woods (PDX) even at 6-12 hours. Cliff explains in one of his posts that this
is because of not modeling the inversion. I’m having better luck with the
Copernicus CAMS forecast in Windy

------
mtalantikite
I was in Delhi in January/February a couple years ago and the air quality
index looked the same as the image from the article around Salem, OR every day
I was there. Some nights I’d check the stats and it’d be around 600. The
depressing thing is you end up getting sort of used to it, albeit with a bad
cough.

The effects of our reckless destruction of the environment are sadly in your
face every day in many parts of the world.

------
danaris
I have a utility that automatically sets my desktop picture to a snapshot from
the GOES satellite image feed every 20 minutes or so, and this morning I
noticed it showing this [0]. I was curious to see if it was what I thought, so
I switched to the west-coast feed [1], and indeed, the smoke appears to have
crossed the entire continent on the jet stream.

No apparent effects here on the east coast for now, but I'm betting sunsets
will be prettier than normal for a while...definitely somewhat concerned for
the possibility that it could worsen, though, if the fires continue.

(Images come from here [2], swap the 16 in the URL for 17 for the west coast
feed)

[0]
[https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...](https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/20202591510_GOES16-ABI-
FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg)

[1]
[https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES17/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...](https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES17/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/20202591520_GOES17-ABI-
FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg)

[2]
[https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16)

------
tyleo
I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday
morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly
driving hours away for a box fan and furnace filter (I finally found them).
All the while I should have been working. Some of my coworkers have complained
of week-long headaches. If anyone else is suffering from this: you are not
alone.

~~~
fossuser
Why not order a few HEPA filter air purifiers?

I have 4 (5th is on its way).

They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you
can see how well in real time: [https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-
pm2-5-pm10-mon...](https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-
pm2-5-pm10-monitor)

Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple
sensors which all sucked in different ways.

Really long thread about this here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_ther...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_there_any_good_air_sensors/)

~~~
carabiner
> Why not order a few HEPA filter air purifiers?

Everyone keeps saying this when they have been all sold out for the past 10
days.

~~~
hnarn
I refuse to believe that all air filtering fans on Amazon are sold out,
especially considering their extreme popularity in countries all over Asia.
And even if we assume that’s the case for the sake of argument, you can still
buy N95 particle masks of many different brands which will protect you well
from particles in the air. They also mostly protect you from viruses. There
was a pretty massive supply shortage of them this spring at the start of the
pandemic but I doubt they’re extremely difficult to get a hold of today, I
have five in my kitchen that I bought online for about a dollar each.

~~~
kibibyte
Looking at the current Amazon search results for “air purifier”: first one
doesn’t ship to California, second is out of stock, third one is ridiculously
expensive ($800!) and been shown to have a questionable effectiveness, fourth
one can only cover a small room (and won’t arrive until next week), fifth and
sixth ones are out of stock.

Also most people don’t enjoy wearing an N95 mask for a long time. Imagine
wearing one for 8 hours while trying to sleep because you haven’t been able to
get a filter. You can try to close every window and door and such in your
house, but no one’s insulation is perfect and the air will get bad after a few
hours.

~~~
olyjohn
Is that true that the smoke will get in after a few hours? Over the last few
days, as soon as I step outside, I can smell the smoke out there really bad. I
thought for sure that if it was smokey in the house, my nose would be used to
the smell. I mean, I can see some particles getting into the house, but it has
to be far better indoors doesn't it?

~~~
kibibyte
Certainly yes, it's better indoors. However long it'll take will depend on how
good your insulation is (a lot of older construction in the Bay Area has
really poor insulation; after all, we don't have to deal with harsh winters).
That said, when it gets really bad outside (AQI >150) for over a few days,
it's almost certainly going to get bad inside if you don't have any
filtration.

One thing worth mentioning though is that the smoke you smell is volatile
organic compounds, and the smoke you see is (I believe) PM10. You're not going
to smell or see PM2.5, which is what these HEPA air purifiers are designed to
filter. I'm not confident in this, but my intuition is that these smaller
PM2.5 particles will find their way into your home more more quickly than the
larger PM10 particles will.

------
01100011
I wonder how much of an effect this will have on crop yields and crop quality?
I expect we'll see lower yields and less carbohydrate content. Also, what is
the composition of the particles emitted by the fires? Is it mostly carbon or
is there some potassium hydroxide? Is that fertilizing to any degree?

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Diffuse light has a tendency to increase yield by decreasing the shading
effect on lower leaves, so it largely cancels out. It is also fairly easily to
saturate photosites in full sun. Heat/water are more limiting in these
contexts.

It's really not an issue.

------
DocG
Genuine question, are these fires big enough to stop them from happening for a
while? Or should we expect another one next year?

Edit: My original question was more in mind with does this have same effect as
controlled burning / prescribed burning. Thank you all for replies :)

~~~
londons_explore
In % of land area burned, the fires are pretty small. Far less than 1% of the
US land area burned this year.

So, given the same weather conditions, you should expect more fires next year.

~~~
derefr
That isn’t the statistic I would expect to be pulled out here. Not all land
area has any chance of catching/spreading a fire. Fires don’t really spread
through rainforest; they definitely don’t spread through rocky areas; nor,
really, through swampland; nor across mountain ranges; nor through irrigated
cropland. (Nor through modern concrete cities, but city land-area is
negligible.)

There’s definitely some portion of the US land mass that’s covered in either
dry brush, dry underbrush, or dry grass. But that portion is pretty small, I
would think. It _could_ actually be that a fairly large portion of
“potentially burnable” land-area catches fire each year. (That doesn’t imply
anything about there being any less of it for next year, though; it recovers!)

~~~
ALittleLight
This propublica story has a lot of detail on the fires. They estimate that
there are ~20 million acres overdue for burn and the fires this year are
burning about a million acres. If I understood it correctly a million acres
burning a year is about what's required for stasis, but the 20 million acre
backlog will need to be burned too.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-
prevent-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-
megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen/)

~~~
reissbaker
At this point over 3 million acres [1] have burned in CA alone. So, seems like
some of the 20 million acre backlog is getting burned through this year.

1: [https://www.fire.ca.gov/daily-wildfire-
report/](https://www.fire.ca.gov/daily-wildfire-report/)

~~~
joe_the_user
OK, so in three equivalent years, 50% of what needs to go will be gone - and
that will give "herd immunity" to the unburned parts - 'till those get large
again, say in 5 more years.

------
naivedevops
Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo we are getting to 34C (93F) every day, and even the
nights have been extremely warm. And here at the southern hemisphere it's
winter now.

~~~
larrik
What are winters normally like? You seem to be about as far from the equator
as places like Miami, so I'm not sure what to expect.

~~~
marcosdumay
At São Paulo, it should be usual to have days where the maximum temperature is
around 15°C, but most should reach high 20's. It should rain a lot of the time
too, but with a small amount of water.

But hot and dry days are not unheard of, they are just unusual.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I'm sorry you guys are experiencing this. I hope that my question isn't
foolish, but is it possible that the deforestation in the Amazon is partially
causing the reduced rain?

~~~
marcosdumay
I don't think so.

First, the forest covering of the Amazon didn't change that much on the last
few years. Don't let international press fool you, the forest isn't "all
burning down". It's burning down a lot, but not that much.

But more importantly, the rain on that region is mostly from oceanic and local
humidity (São Paulo is in a forest area, with plenty of rivers).

It rains less there in La Niña years. I don't know how abnormal the situation
really is. But the heat is way more unusual than low humidity.

------
mensetmanusman
Use room air purifiers with hepa quality, those remove particles down to <100
nm (these should be in every classroom already to capture SARS-CoV2 and make
indoor air cleaner than outdoor air).

Furnace filters are not designed to filter as much, or else they would need
changing too often and put too much pressure on the furnace motors when people
forget, which is a hazard in its own right.

~~~
Balgair
Wow, corona viruses are ~0.1um in size, maybe a bit bigger. HEPA filters of
appropriate quality then should trap many of the viruses. Thanks for the heads
up!

~~~
fossuser
Even smaller stuff gets bounced around at that level via Brownian motion:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion)

HEPA filters can catch really small stuff from this even if technically it
could fit through.

------
cm2187
Would be curious to compare how much CO2 has been emitted as a result of these
fires to California’s annual CO2 savings by going for renewable energy.

~~~
VBprogrammer
That might be interesting from a purely educational point of view but it is of
little practical relevance.

Trees burning in wild fires release CO2 that was captured in the last couple
of decades by the tree in the process of growing. Burning fossil fuels
releases CO2 which was captured millennia ago and buried deep underground.

It's roughly the same as why melting icebergs cause sea levels to rise but
rain will not.

~~~
revax
FYI melting iceberg do not cause sea levels to rise, but glacier do. An ice
cube melting in your glass water do not rises the level.

~~~
fullstop
I don't think that this is technically true, since icebergs are made from
fresh water and they melt in the salt water of the ocean. Fresh water is less
dense, so it will take up a larger volume than that of salt water.

~~~
deelowe
Where does the additional density come from that wasn't there already when the
iceberg was floating?

~~~
fullstop
The amount of salt water displaced by the fresh water ice is equal to its
weight, but the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than
the displaced salt water. It is small, but calculable.

From what I remember reading, if all of the floating sea ice on the globe were
to melt right now, sea levels would rise by about 5 centimeters.

[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010GL042496)

------
pbuzbee
Related: I've noticed here (California's central valley) that trees have
started changing colors for fall already. This is pretty early: usually trees
change in mid-October. I'm guessing this is from the smoke reducing
light/temperatures.

------
jedberg
On the day when the Bay Area was completely blacked out, the weather forecast
said it would be 89, and when I went outside my thermometer was reading 68.

The cooling effect of smoke is ridiculous.

~~~
dan_quixote
Yeah, we had several days in Seattle where the forecast was 70s and sunny yet
it stayed 58F all day and night.

------
ogre_codes
Seeing this first hand here near Eugene. Weather app has said mid 80s, I go
outside and it's in the mid-low 60s and I need a hoodie.

Our local fire crews say this completely crappy weather/ unhealthy air is
slowing the fire down so they can increase containment. Going stir crazy, but
also this fire scared the hell out of most people so it's hard to complain too
much about lingering fog/ chilly days.

------
yowlingcat
If you're like me and you wondered if the fires raging on the west coast could
benefit from the controlled burn approach Australia has historically used to
control bushfires, the answer seems to be a disappointing no [1]. Any folks
who know this better than me who can comment?

> He adds that a particular feature of the recent fires in Australia is that
> they have spread across the crown or top part of the forest - so removing
> growth at ground level does not make that much difference.

> Also the fires have been hot and intense enough to burn through areas that
> were already burned, with embers able to travel through the air and ignite
> areas far away from an active fire.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
australia-51020384](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51020384)

~~~
mensetmanusman
Conservation of energy indicates that you can ‘flatten the curve’ of forest
fires by doing more burns more frequently that are less intense.

~~~
yowlingcat
That's what I was under the impression of as well. What the article seems to
imply, though, is that exogenous increase in burn intensity (ostensibly
through climate change) is making the mileage of that approach less practical
than it used to be. Of course, I'm sure the two are not mutually exclusive.

------
little_hills
> the modeling systems on which they are based do not include smoke

Can anybody help with providing some links to content that would expand on
this? It doesn’t have to be region/country specific, just looking to dig a bit
deeper in a lore general sense about current models and future improvements.

I can take a guess and say that it wasn’t accounted for in current models as
it might have been too niche a statistic to try and monitor, but either it’s
becoming more of a factor now that’s having a prolonged (significant) effect
on models or maybe there has just been a push to expand into those niches to
make the models more adaptable in the future.

------
rconti
I drove from the Idaho panhandle to SF on Sunday. 1000 miles of abysmal air.

Most of the journey had reported 500+ AQI values, with some areas visibly
much, much worse.

The worst was along the Columbia River gorge where the Deschutes flows into
the Columbia (2nd photo in my tweet)

I'm not sensitive to poor air, and I was running my car on recirculated air,
but at one point I actually started wearing my KN95 as I was driving.

[https://twitter.com/reidconti/status/1305601474005590018?s=2...](https://twitter.com/reidconti/status/1305601474005590018?s=20)

~~~
jldugger
> I drove from the Idaho panhandle to SF on Sunday

One does not simply walk into Mordor...

------
SubiculumCode
That's how its been in California the last few summers. Hot summer days, big
fire(s), cooling of the summer heat under the deep cover of smoke.

------
moocowtruck
my local forecasting should blame it on the smoke too, since they never get it
right...you know when i know it's going to rain...when it's already raining.

------
mshenfield
Cliff Mass spoiled himself for me with this asinine blog post comparing
Seattle BLM protesters to brownshirts in Nazi Germany [0]. It feels icky to
get behind someone who will use his platform to sling ridiculous accusations
and accept no criticism [1].

It's a shame - his weather reporting is uniquely good and fun to read.

[0] [https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/08/seattle-city-in-
fear-...](https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/08/seattle-city-in-fear-can-be-
restored.html)

[1] [https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/08/my-firing-at-
knkx.htm...](https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/08/my-firing-at-knkx.html)

EDIT: Fleshed out criticism of the original blog post:

[http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_8421ecd2-d90c-11ea-9e91-...](http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_8421ecd2-d90c-11ea-9e91-3f2d966a45fd.html)

~~~
jackyinger
I agree that he went off the deep end with that post. Let there’s be no
mistake about that; I live on cap hill in Seattle and his analogy falls flat
on its face for many reasons.

But, I think we should allow ourselves the nuanced perspective of continuing
to enjoy his weather posts even if we disagree with his politics.

I think that we owe it to ourselves to be able to pick and choose information
from a person rather than writing them off entirely.

Isn’t that what we do with family members that we have disagreements with but
still have to get along with? Are we not all one big human family?

~~~
cmendel
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, are you advocating for continuing to follow a blog
that is known to give misinformation because you like the writing style?
Because if that is the case I would highly recommend changing your mind, the
Bayesian prior has changed and unfortunately it is permanent.

~~~
cbsks
Just because he gives misleading social commentary, doesn’t mean that his
meteorological information is any less accurate.

~~~
fanatic2pope
How do you know his meteorological information is accurate?

~~~
cbsks
He is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, a
fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and his resume [0] looks
impressive to me. I realize that this is an appeal to authority, but since I
don’t know enough about meteorology to make an informed decision about the
specific information that he gives, his qualifications seem to indicate that
he is a trustworthy source of meteorological information.

I did a quick internet search and looked him up on Wikipedia. His Wikipedia
entry [1] mentions the controversies surrounding his non-professional views,
but I didn’t find anything about his meteorological views being in question.

Please correct me if I missed something! It can be hard to determine if
someone is trustworthy on the internet.

[0]:
[https://a.atmos.washington.edu/%7Ecliff/CliffsVitaeLatest090...](https://a.atmos.washington.edu/%7Ecliff/CliffsVitaeLatest09042019.pdf)

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Mass](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Mass)

