wildfire season aq data summaries Ranil Dhammapala wildfire season aq data summaries

WA 2017 wildfire season Not the But the most widespread smoke episodes most acres burned worst air quality But the most widespread smoke episodes More people breathing bad air More exceedences of Federal AQ standards More NAAQS exceedences than ever before (132 PM2.5, 32 O3 and 14 PM10 since 1 August).

Wildfire PM2.5 comparison http://arcg.is/1b5uOC

O3 during Aug 2017 wildfires Widespread high O3 events early Aug & Sept Wildfire smoke contribution to O3: Compare O3 on 2017 smoke- influenced days against same days ± 1 week over 5 recent yrs. Only consider historical days with PM2.5 < 15µg/m³ Justification for the 15ug/m3 cutoff: 2013 & 2016 were years with low wildfire smoke impacts. The 99th percentile of all daily mean PM2.5 concs at all sites across the state, was ~15ug/m3.

Diurnal cycles: compared O3 on 2017 smoke- influenced days against same days ± 1 week over 5 recent yrs. Only considered historical days with PM2.5 < 15µg/m³. The 75th to 90th percentile of the older data are often lower than the 75th percentile of the episodes, but not hugely so in Spokane & Kennewick.

O3 vs T plots: Using Jul20- 30 Sept data since 2013, plot D8M O3 vs afternoon avg T, identifying days when PM conc was > 15. You can see the delta O3 contributed by wildfire smoke varies from a few ppb at Spokane & Kennewick, to over 20ppb at Enumclaw. Thickness of smoke layer (judging by PM concentration) does not appear to have stymied O3 formation. My take: Spokane & Kennewick don't have a whole lot of extra NOx lying around to react with the VOCs in wildfire smoke. Areas downwind of the Puget Sound urban areas do.

Monitoring to facilitate forecasting AirGraphing, AirnowTech & Airfire tools Temp monitors on blog map (mostly automatic, but can be quirky) Comments? Monitor types that schools could use? SC-AQMD Purpleair.org (PA2) Instructions for schools to use blog map (webinar) AP5: hourly monitor data poll Red= feedback received during meeting

Monitoring to facilitate forecasting Airpact monitor timeseries: update ~8AM? Other monitoring needs? Data visualization Telemetry tools Data summaries On-the-fly animations Understand the audience and their needs Health districts: want to know what the monitoring info means, how to inform the public Model output: 3 products / day (am, afternoon, pm). Feedback on new AirNow mobile app Red= feedback received during meeting