Air Quality Data Approach for Defining Wildfire Influence: Impacts on PM_2.5, NO₂, CO, and O₃ in Western Canadian...

As the climate warms, it is recognized that wildfires are increasing in size and frequency. The negative effects of wildfires on air quality are well documented, especially on commonly monitored atmospheric pollutants such as PM_2.5, NO₂, CO, and O₃. However, it is not clear how frequently wildfires influence urban air quality and the size of that influence relative to traffic and industrial pollutants. To understand the impact of wildfires on air quality, we have established an automated method to identify wildfire-influenced ambient air measurements. The trajectory-fire interception method (TFIM) compares hybrid single-particle Lagrangian integrated trajectory (HYSPLIT) back-trajectories from an air quality monitoring station to satellite imagery of fire "hot-spots" to determine the number of trajectory-fire interceptions that occur. From the number of interceptions and local PM_2.5 measurements, we have defined a wildfire-influenced period to occur if the interception count is ≥20. TFIM wildfire identification compares favorably with Environment and Climate Change Canada's smoke forecast, FireWork, and with the BlueSky trajectory-based forecast. Using TFIM, we studied the impact of wildfire-influenced periods on PM_2.5, NO₂, CO, and O₃ from 2001 to 2019 in Western Canadian urban areas. We show that wildfire-influenced periods have elevated concentrations of PM_2.5, NO₂, and CO but not O₃. We show that a decreasing urban baseline of CO and NO₂ over time results in a relatively greater impact of wildfires on these pollutants, which emphasizes the changing relative importance of wildfires on air quality.