Latest news with #MarkParrington
Irish Post
06-06-2025
- Climate
- Irish Post
Canadian wildfire smoke seen in Ireland and across Northern Europe
SMOKE from wildfires burning in central Canada has drifted thousands of miles across the Atlantic, arriving in Ireland and other parts of northwestern Europe, according to European climate researchers. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), an environmental agency under the European Union's Earth observation programme, has been tracking the movement of wildfire smoke since the start of May. Using satellite data, CAMS confirmed that a large plume originating from the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario reached Ireland on Sunday, June 1. Additional plumes are expected to spread further into Europe later this week. 'Wildfires are a frequent occurrence in boreal forests from spring through summer,' said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at CAMS. 'But the intensity of fires we've seen in Canada this year, particularly in central regions, is extraordinary.' CAMS analysis shows that while the smoke has visibly affected the sky, producing hazy skies and vibrant sunsets, the smoke is travelling at high altitudes, meaning they won't have a major effect on air quality in Europe. However, elsewhere the fires have already caused a lot of damage. More than 25,000 people in Canada have been forced to evacuate, prompting officials in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba to declare month-long states of emergency. U.S. states near the Canadian border have also experienced low air quality as the smoke drifts south. The fires are part of what experts warn could become an intense wildfire season in Canada, exacerbated by ongoing drought, that's also affecting northern Europe. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service has facilities across all of Europe (Photo by CAMS) Similar wildfires are happening across Russia's Far Eastern Federal District, in the regions of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai near the borders with China and Mongolia. According to CAMS, carbon emissions from fires in that area have reached their highest levels for this time of year since 2018. Smoke from those Russian blazes has been detected as far away as northeastern China, northern Japan and even the Arctic. While current forecasts suggest only minor health risks from the smoke in Europe, Parrington claimed that the increasing reach of these wildfires add to growing concerns about the long-term effects of climate change and global air quality. Going into further detail Parrington said, "The fact that we can notice the impacts of the smoke in European skies is a reflection of the devastation of wildfires which have been burning in Canada, indicating the increased number of fires, intensity, and duration. A lot of smoke has to be generated in order for it to travel so far and be noticeable and shows how people on either side of the Atlantic are connected via the atmosphere." As we come up to the drier summer months, monitoring agencies like CAMS will continue to track these plumes across Ireland and northern Europe. See More: CAMS, Canada, Mark Parrington, Wilfire
Euronews
05-06-2025
- Climate
- Euronews
Smoke from intense Canadian wildfires reaches Europe
Canada's wildfire season has got off to a dangerous start, with thousands of people forced to flee their homes and blankets of smoke affecting air quality across eastern North America. Following a series of record-breaking seasons, data shows that 2025 is also shaping up to be another intense year. Twice a day, a NASA satellite sends images to the ground, giving a real-time view of where fires are burning. This is especially useful for remote areas where no sensors are stationed. As of Tuesday, that satellite had picked up four times as many fire hot spots across Canada than is typical for early June. That's more than any year since the satellite began transmitting in 2012, except 2023, according to data from Global Forest Watch. Though the satellite has recorded thousands of hot spots so far this year, that does not mean there are actually that many active fires. Each hot spot could be detected repeatedly over the course of days. And because each detection is about the size of 26 football fields, each point of data might be one part of a much larger blaze, said James MacCarthy, wildfire research manager at Global Forest Watch. Based on data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, about 200 fires are actively burning in Canada and have consumed about 19,900 square kilometres of terrain, most of it in the last week. Only 2023 saw such high numbers so early in Canada's fire season, which runs from April through October. That year, wildfires burned a record 170,000 square kilometres - more than twice the surface area of Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes. Taken together, the hot spots and area burned mean 2025 is the second-worst start to the season in years. Smoke from Canadian wildfires worsened air quality in the eastern US on Wednesday as several Midwestern states battled conditions deemed unhealthy by the federal government. It lingered on the skylines of cities from Kansas City to Minneapolis, and a swath of the region had unhealthy air quality according to an Environmental Protection Agency map. Over the last few days, air quality alerts have been issued in several states, including New York, New Jersey, Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine. The EU's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) said this week that smoke from wildfires in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan had even been transported across the Atlantic, reaching Europe. An initial plume crossed the Mediterranean region on 18 to 19 May, reaching as far east as Greece. A second, larger plume crossed the Atlantic in the last week of May, reaching northwestern parts of Europe on 1 June. The smoke isn't expected to have any significant impact on Europe's air quality as it is high up in the atmosphere. Typically, the effects of plumes like this are more hazy skies with red or orange sunsets. But, says Mark Parrington, senior scientist of CAMS, the fact that the smoke can be observed in Europe 'is a reflection of the scale of the fires and the impacts they have been having in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.' 'Wildfires are a frequent occurrence in boreal forests from spring and through the summer months,' Parrington adds. 'Up to the beginning of June, our data is showing that central regions of Canada have experienced a very intense few weeks in terms of wildfire emissions.' 'A warm and dry finish to May and early June has created a significant fire season,' said Liam Buchart, a fire weather specialist with the Canadian Forest Service. The weather conditions are made more likely by climate change and encourage wildfires to start. That means even though 90 per cent of wildfires in Manitoba this year have been human-caused, according to the provincial government, climate change helps enable their spread. 'Climate change is creating the conditions that make it more likely that human-caused fires are going to spread, or even start,' MacCarthy said. 'It might be a human starting it, but it's going to spread quickly because now there's hot and dry conditions that are occurring more frequently and more intensely than they have in the past.' The hot and dry weather is likely to continue for at least the next week across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, according to Natural Resources Canada. The agency's forecasts also call for 'a warmer and drier than normal July and August for large portions of Canada,' Buchart said. 'The remainder of the fire season looks to remain above normal, especially over the northern prairie provinces and southern British Columbia,' he said. Local residents and an MEP from the Left Group in the European Parliament are today (4 June) making an official complaint to the European Ombudsman about the Acciaierie d'Italia steel mill, still known by its former name Ilva, in the southern city of Taranto. Despite opening an infringement procedure against Italy in 2013 for breaching environmental laws at the site, the EU has failed to escalate it appropriately, they say. During that 12-year wait, residents are continuing to suffer the consequences of air, soil and groundwater pollution in Taranto, which numerous studies have linked to higher rates of cancer and other diseases. 'Today, we turn to the Ombudsman with a sense of responsibility but also with deep bitterness,' says Alessandro Marescotti, a Taranto resident and president of the Associazione PeaceLink, an NGO which is also listed as a complainant on the document seen by Euronews Green. 'We do so because we no longer have much confidence in the European Commission. The Commission had years to intervene. It received reports, studies, and appeals. Meanwhile, in Taranto, many people have fallen ill and died,' he says. 'The case of the ILVA plant in Taranto has, unfortunately, remained in the shadows of institutional indifference.' 'Greetings from Taranto, the only city founded by the Spartans in 706 BC.' This is how Massimo Castellana from the Taranto Parents Association (Genitori Tarantini) signs off on WhatsApp when I ask about the pollution that has blighted his city for decades. It was described as a 'sacrifice zone' by a UN Special Rapporteur in 2022 due to pollution from llva, which has loomed over the Tamburi district for the last 60 years. But there is clearly a lot of pride in this city on the Ionian Sea, and residents are not giving up without a fight. The Italian government knew Taranto was an area 'at high risk of an environmental crisis' as early as 1990. In 2001, photos and scientific evidence acquired by Marescotti revealed an alarming scene, 'with thick toxic fumes that resembled something out of Dante's Inferno.' 'According to analyses, the fumes contained carcinogenic substances in concentrations equivalent to more than 7,000 cigarettes over an eight-hour work shift,' he says. Despite public outrage, Europe's biggest steel plant was grindingly slow to follow EU rules; in particular, the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) adopted in 1996, which required all installations to have a permit by 2007. Italy finally issued an authorisation in 2011, following legal action from the EU. But by 2012, mounting evidence of an 'environmental disaster' led to a local trial at which the judge ordered Ilva's most polluting parts to be seized and shut down. Since then, however, successive governments have issued 18 so-called 'Save-Ilva' decrees to enable it to continue operating, having specially introduced the concept of a plant of 'strategic national importance'. 'There is no economic, occupational, or strategic reason that can justify such fierce insistence from the politicians (and the unions, guilty of complicity) against the health of the Taranto people,' says Castellana. 'If the plant has not yet been closed, despite its danger being clarified at multiple levels, it is due to the subservience of a depressing political class to steel producers and industrialists, particularly in northern Italy.' In 2013, following complaints from citizens and NGOs including PeaceLink, the Commission began an infringement procedure against Italy for violations of environmental standards. This infringement procedure has now been open for 12 years without any substantial further action. A 'reasoned opinion' - the next step when a member state fails to comply - followed in 2014, and then, bureaucratic silence. MEPs who repeatedly questioned the lack of progress in the European Parliament (EP) were met with 'vague and unsatisfactory answers', according to the complaint. For Valentina Palmisano, an MEP from Puglia, elected with the Five Star Movement in Italy, which is part of the Left Group in the European Parliament, this situation is unacceptable. 'European law cannot be applied selectively and Taranto cannot be treated as a rights-free zone,' she tells Euronews Green. Palmisano believes the Commission's prolonged inaction is politically motivated. 'On the one hand, it shields itself from responsibility by pointing to the fact that an infringement procedure has been open since 2013, as if this absolves it from the ongoing health and environmental consequences of ILVA's operations. 'On the other hand, it avoids referring Italy to the CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union) because steel production remains politically sensitive and strategically important in the context of EU industrial policy.' There is concerted pressure within the EU to boost domestic steel production - in response to Trump's tariffs, Chinese steel dumping, and the shadow of war across Europe. On 7 May this year - the same day one of Ilva's two blast furnaces exploded - the Commission 'decided to send an additional letter of formal notice to Italy.' For campaigners, it was again far too little, far too late. In fact, the complaint from Palmisano and PeaceLink describes it as a backwards step in the infringement process. They say the Commission has failed to ensure legal enforcement and must now finally take Italy to the CJEU. 'Taranto has been sacrificed on the altar of economic interests, at the expense of health, dignity, and the fundamental rights of its inhabitants,' says Marescotti. Alongside this administrative approach, Taranto residents, spurred on by the premature deaths of family and friends, have pursued collective action to stem Ilva's pollution. A report by Sentieri, an epidemiological monitoring group, found that between 2005 and 2012, 3,000 deaths were directly linked to exposure to pollutants from the plant - including benzene, heavy metals, and dioxins. Cancer and excess overall mortality are well above regional averages, with childhood leukaemia nearly 50 per cent above expected levels. A case brought by members of the Taranto Parents Association, including Castellana, was referred by the Milan district court to the CJEU for clarification. In a landmark ruling on 24 June last year - applicable to tens of thousands of sites in the EU - the top court said that operations must be suspended where there are serious threats to the environment and human health. This ruling was brought back to the Tribunale di Milano for a hearing on 22 May, but no final decision has been reached yet. Castellana remains hopeful, but the Ombudsman complaint describes the case as being stuck in the bureaucratic hinterland that seems to surround Ilva. In short, the complainants write, 'The case remains pending, the ILVA steel plant continues to operate and pollute, and the ILVA infringement procedure is still ongoing.' The steel plant, which coats Taranto in fine red iron ore dust, appears to have left its mark on all living things. The food chain has been corrupted, Castellana claims. A decade ago, the impact on livestock was a major concern, with thousands of sheep and goats culled after cheese made from their milk was found to contain dioxins above legal limits. Now, a source with knowledge of the issue says, mussels are the most enduring bearers of dioxins in the environment. They grow in Mar Picolo ('Small Sea'), an enclosed coastal lagoon where the filter feeders accumulate dioxins in their bodies that are stuck in the sediment. Air pollution has fluctuated and improved over the years, notably around 2013, the source says, but Taranto is still awaiting remediation of its air, soil, and water. In its call for buyers of Ilva, which remains under special administration, the Italian government stipulates that the new owner must decarbonise the plant in line with the EU's goals. Palmisano, however, thinks it should be nationalised; in order 'to align industrial production with real ecological transition, based on green hydrogen, not gas, and finally undertake the necessary remediation of the ILVA site.' 'No transition is credible without first addressing the environmental and health devastation already caused,' she says. Other campaigners want to see Ilva closed altogether, and its workers supported to transition into other sectors, bringing a dirty chapter to an end. Their determination endures. Marescotti has previously said he owes his strength to always go on to his father, who was a partisan in the anti-fascist resistance against Mussolini. Castellana says he would never move away from Taranto, 'because Taranto is my mother. And a mother should not be abandoned.' 'We demand justice,' he says. 'We owe it to the little Tarantinos who are no longer here, to those who are suffering today, and to future generations that we want to be able to live in health and enjoy the sublime beauty of Taranto.' The European Commission and the Italian government have been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Canadian wildfire smoke reaches Europe after near 7,000-km journey
While Canadian fire crews across several provinces continue to battle blazes that have prompted states of emergency and forced people from their homes, smoke from the wildfires have been travelling a fair distance over the past few weeks, especially in recent days. Over the past few days, smoke has travelled nearly 7,000 kilometres––more than half of the globe in distance. And that won't be the end of it, either, as additional smoke is expected to reach Europe in the coming days as strong winds force the plume farther east into the continent. DON'T MISS: According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the first high-altitude smoke plume entered the Mediterranean region on May 18-19, with reports of it reaching Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Following that, a much larger quantity of wildfire smoke plume travelled across the Atlantic during the last week of May, hitting northwestern parts of Europe on Sunday, June 1. This #TimelapseTuesday, we're taking a look at this imagery from @NOAA's #GOESEast 🛰️ as thick #smoke from Canadian #wildfires has been drifting across the eastern U.S. from May 31 to June 2, 2025. #AirQuality Alerts cover much of the Upper Midwest today. Latest:… — NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) June 3, 2025 The issue of wildfire smoke will remain a problem for Eastern Canada, as well, with recent, explosive fire behaviour in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and strong winds expected to push more of it eastward, eventually hitting Europe in the next week or so. Major wildfires continue throughout portions of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and northern British Columbia. Provincial states of emergency have been issued for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where multiple communities remain under evacuation orders. Mark Parrington, senior scientist with CAMS, said wildfires are a frequent occurrence in boreal forests from spring and through the summer months. June 1-3, 2025 satellite imagery. (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)) Up to the start of June, CAMS' data showed that parts of Canada have experienced a "very intense few weeks" in terms of wildfire emissions. "This data, and the fact that we are able to observe the smoke in Europe, is a reflection of the scale of the fires and impacts they have been having in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In CAMS, we monitor events such as these in order to understand how they affect the atmosphere and air quality regionally and globally," said Parrington, in a news release. The good news is that the air quality in Europe isn't expected to be affected, unlike parts of Canada where alerts are in place to advise of health risks, since it will remain well above the surface. But folks can expect hazy skies alongside red sunrises and sunsets. Click here to view the video With files from Rachel Modestino, a meteorologist at The Weather Network. Header image courtesy of NOAA
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Canadian wildfire smoke reaches Europe after near 7,000-km journey
While Canadian fire crews across several provinces continue to battle blazes that have prompted states of emergency and forced people from their homes, smoke from the wildfires have been travelling a fair distance over the past few weeks, especially in recent days. Over the past few days, smoke has travelled nearly 7,000 kilometres––more than half of the globe in distance. And that won't be the end of it, either, as additional smoke is expected to reach Europe in the coming days as strong winds force the plume farther east into the continent. DON'T MISS: According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the first high-altitude smoke plume entered the Mediterranean region on May 18-19, with reports of it reaching Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Following that, a much larger quantity of wildfire smoke plume travelled across the Atlantic during the last week of May, hitting northwestern parts of Europe on Sunday, June 1. The issue of wildfire smoke will remain a problem for Eastern Canada, as well, with recent, explosive fire behaviour in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and strong winds expected to push more of it eastward, eventually hitting Europe in the next week or so. Major wildfires continue throughout portions of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and northern British Columbia. Provincial states of emergency have been issued for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where multiple communities remain under evacuation orders. Mark Parrington, senior scientist of with CAMS, said wildfires are a frequent occurrence in boreal forests from spring and through the summer months. June 1-3, 2025 satellite imagery. (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)) Up to the start of June, CAMS' data showed that parts of Canada have experienced a "very intense few weeks" in terms of wildfire emissions. "This data, and the fact that we are able to observe the smoke in Europe, is a reflection of the scale of the fires and impacts they have been having in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In CAMS, we monitor events such as these in order to understand how they affect the atmosphere and air quality regionally and globally," said Parrington, in a news release. The good news is that the air quality in Europe isn't expected to be affected, unlike parts of Canada where alerts are in place to advise of health risks, since it will remain well above the surface. But folks can expect hazy skies alongside red sunrises and sunsets. Click here to view the video With files from Rachel Modestino, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.
The Independent
04-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Europe could see skies turn red as Canada wildfire smoke reaches continent
Smoke from Canadian wildfires has begun to reach as far as Europe as the large and intense flames continue to threaten health in North America. The fires have forced more than 27,000 Canadians in three provinces to flee their homes, with smoke now creating unhealthy conditions at ground level for Americans in parts of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin. It is not expected to bring similar health concerns in Europe, with surface-air quality not affected, but those on the continent have been told to expect hazy skies and reddish-orange sunsets. The first high-altitude plume reached Greece and the eastern Mediterranean just over two weeks ago, with a much larger plume crossing the Atlantic within the past week and more expected in coming days, according to Copernicus. 'That's really an indicator of how intense these fires are, that they can deliver smoke,' high enough that they can be carried so far on jet streams, said Mark Parrington, senior scientist at the service. The fires also are putting out significant levels of carbon pollution — an estimated 56 megatonnes through Monday, second only to 2023, according to Copernicus. Smoke hits north-east US The smell of smoke hung over the Minneapolis-St. Paul area on Tuesday morning despite rain that obscured the full measure of the dirty air. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an alert for almost the entire state into Wednesday, but the Twin Cities area got the worst of it in the Midwest on Tuesday. 'As the smoke continues to move across the state Tuesday, air quality will slowly improve from northwest to southeast for the remainder of the alert area,' the agency said. 'The smoke is expected to leave the state by Wednesday at noon.' The Iowa Department of Natural Resources warned that air quality in a band from the state's southwest corner to the northeast could fall into the unhealthy category through Thursday morning. The agency recommended that people, especially those with heart and lung disease, avoid long or intense activities and to take extra breaks while doing strenuous actions outdoors. Smoky conditions that have reached the US periodically in recent weeks extended as far east Tuesday as Michigan, west into the Dakotas and Nebraska, and as far to the southeast as Georgia. Conditions at ground level are unhealthy The US Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow map showed a swath of red for 'unhealthy' conditions across the eastern half Minnesota into western Wisconsin and northern Iowa. The map also showed purple for 'very unhealthy" across much of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, where the Air Quality Index numbers of 250 and were common, though conditions started to improve slightly by late morning. The Air Quality Index — AQI — measures how clean or polluted the air is, focusing on health effects that might be experienced within a few hours or days after breathing polluted air. It is based on ground-level ozone, particle pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. Particulates are the main issue from the fires The index ranges from green, where the air quality is satisfactory and air pollution poses little or no risk, to maroon, which is considered hazardous. That level comes with health warnings of emergency conditions where everyone is more likely to be affected, according to AirNow. While Minnesota officials warned on Monday that conditions in the northwest part of the state could reach the maroon category on Tuesday, conditions there were generally yellow, or moderate. There were a few scattered locations in the Twin Cities area that temporarily hit maroon on Tuesday morning. But by midday Tuesday, most of the remaining maroon spots in the region were on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Hospitals are seeing more patients with respiratory symptoms Hennepin Healthcare, the main emergency hospital in Minneapolis, has seen a slight increase in visits by patients with respiratory symptoms aggravated by the dirty air. Dr. Rachel Strykowski, a pulmonologist, said there is usually a bit of a delay before patients come in, which is unfortunate because the sooner those patients contact their doctors, the better the outcome. Typical symptoms, she said, include 'increase in shortness of breath, wheezing, maybe coughing a bit more, and flares of their underlying disease, and that's usually COPD and asthma.' What happens, Strykowski said, is that the fine particulate matter from the wildfire smoke triggers more inflammation in patients' airways, aggravating their underlying medical conditions. Strykowski noted that this is usually a time those patients can go outside and enjoy the summer weather because there are fewer triggers, so the current ones forcing them to stay inside can feel 'quite isolating." People can protect themselves by staying indoors or by wearing N95 masks, she said. Strykowski added that they must be N95s because the cloth masks many people used during the COVID-19 pandemic don't provide enough filtration. The Canadian fire situation Canada is having another bad wildfire season, and more than 27,000 people in three provinces have been forced to evacuate. Most of the smoke reaching the American Midwest has been coming from fires northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg in Manitoba. The Canadian Press reported that Winnipeg hotels were opening up Monday to evacuees. More than 17,000 Manitoba residents have been displaced since last week, including 5,000 residents of the community of Flin Flon, nearly 400 miles (645 kilometers) northwest of Winnipeg. In neighboring Saskatchewan, 2,500 residents of the town of La Ronge were ordered to flee Monday, on top of more than 8,000 in the province who had been evacuated earlier. In Saskatoon, where the premiers of Canada's provinces and the country's prime minister met Monday, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said all of Canada has come together to help the Prairie provinces, The Canadian Press reported. Two people were killed by a wildfire in mid-May in Lac du Bonnet, northeast of Winnipeg. Canada's worst-ever wildfire season was in 2023. It choked much of North America with dangerous smoke for months.
