Impact of extreme wildfires from the Brazilian Forests and sugarcane burning on the air quality of the biggest megacity on South America

Recently, extreme wildfires have damaged important ecosystems worldwide and have affected urban areas miles away due to long-range transport of smoke plumes. We performed a comprehensive analysis to clarify how smoke plumes from Pantanal and Amazon forests wildfires and sugarcane harvest burning als...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Science of the total environment 2023-08, Vol.888, p.163439-163439, Article 163439
Main Authors: Souto-Oliveira, Carlos E., Marques, Márcia T.A., Nogueira, Thiago, Lopes, Fabio J.S., Medeiros, José A.G., Medeiros, Ilca M.M.A., Moreira, Gregori A., da Silva Dias, Pedro Leite, Landulfo, Eduardo, Andrade, Maria de F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air Pollutants - analysis
Air pollution
Air Pollution - analysis
Brazil
Carbon isotopes
Ecosystem
Environmental Monitoring
Fires
Forests
Greenhouse gases
Mannose-Binding Protein-Associated Serine Proteases - analysis
Particulate Matter - analysis
Remote sensing
Saccharum
Smoke - analysis
Smoke plumes
Wildfires
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Summary:Recently, extreme wildfires have damaged important ecosystems worldwide and have affected urban areas miles away due to long-range transport of smoke plumes. We performed a comprehensive analysis to clarify how smoke plumes from Pantanal and Amazon forests wildfires and sugarcane harvest burning also from interior of the state of São Paulo (ISSP) were transported and injected into the atmosphere of the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP), where they worsened air quality and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) levels. To classify event days, multiple biomass burning fingerprints as carbon isotopes, Lidar ratio and specific compounds ratios were combined with back trajectories modeling. During smoke plume event days in the MASP fine particulate matter concentrations exceeded the WHO standard (>25 μg m−3), at 99 % of the air quality monitoring stations, and peak CO2 excess were 100 % to 1178 % higher than non-event days. We demonstrated how external pollution events such as wildfires pose an additional challenge for cities, regarding public health threats associated to air quality, and reinforces the importance of GHG monitoring networks to track local and remote GHG emissions and sources in urban areas. [Display omitted] •Risks of forest wildfire and harvest burnings to air quality and public health on megacities•Assessment of external pollution sources to atmospheric pollution on urban areas•Comprehensive scenario of long-range transport of smoke plumes and intrusion on urban atmosphere
ISSN:0048-9697
1879-1026
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163439