The Maryland Department of the Environment is forecasting unhealthy air quality for "sensitive groups" in Baltimore again on Tuesday, for the second day in a row. Sensitive groups include children and people with heart and respiratory ailments. They should limit their time outdoors. Healthy adults are unlikely to be affected.

Until this week there had been only four "Code Orange" days this year when particulate readings have reached unhealthy levels in the Baltimore region, with none since March, according to the MDE. (That's the Key Bridge through this morning's haze, above.)

High pressure over the region, combined with stagnant air, may be contributing to the unhealthy levels of particulates (soot), weather forecasters said. Air quality in Baltimore also reached unhealthy levels for particulate matter on Monday. Cecil County, too, is under an air quality alert from 1 a.m. Tuesday until 1 a.m. Wednesday. 

Here's more from the Clean Air Partners Website:

"Unlike ground level ozone, particles are not a seasonal pollutant; high levels can occur any time of the year. Unhealthy levels of particle pollution in the air can cause or trigger significant health problems. These range from coughing and difficult or painful breathing to the possibility of an emergency room visit or even premature death. Exposure to particles can decrease lung function, weaken the heart, and possibly bring on a heart attack. The environment also suffers from particle pollution. Particles are the major source of haze, and can harm the environment by changing the nutrient and chemical balance in soil and water."

Better days are coming soon.

"It shouldn't be long-lived," said National Weather Service forecaster Andy Woodcock said of the air pollution. After Tuesday, "the wind will go to the north northeast and stay there for a while." And that should clear the air.

Posted by Frank Roylance at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air quality
        

You can see it, plain as day, on your car. That greenish-yellow powder is pollen, mostly from trees at this time of year. And I'd guess mostly oaks.

Pollen counts are high. And if you suffer from spring allergies, you probably didn't need to be told. The outdoors is all in bloom, and the trees, especially, are performing their version of courtship and mating, sending out clouds of male pollen in search of female flower parts. And until they get the job done, or we get a good soaking rain, we'll be dealing with tree pollen allergies.

If you'd like to check the daily pollen counts, here are a couple of Web sites that may help. Pick your fave and check it daily.

The American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.

The Weather Channel.

WeatherBug.

Posted by Frank Roylance at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air quality
        

The pictures and videos from the Beijing Olympic village are appalling. The thick smog and frighteningly short visibilities can only hint at what it must be like to breathe that air - much less compete in it at world-class levels. Four American athletes arriving at the airport with air-filters over their mouths and noses took a lot of heat for the perceived insult to their host country. But it probably wasn't a bad idea.

The Weather Channel website has an interesting page on Olympic weather and air conditions.

With the coal-burning Chinese economy on an astonishing roll, and their huge, urbanizing population eager to adopt a U.S.-style motorized existence, it would seem like there is little or nothing we could expect but continuing degradation of the Chinese environment.

And it's not bad for the Chinese alone. That air pollution degrades the air for the entire entire planet. Much of it can actually be traced as it drifts across the Pacific and into U.S. airspace.

That said, I've run across an essay today that seems to suggest that the situation in China has actually gotten better in recent years. And they write of a dynamic in national economies that seems to bring about environmental improvements as a country's collective wealth grows. Something called the Kuznets Curve.

Wouldn't that be nice?  Have a look.  It's a long read, but fascinating. Does this make sense to you?

Posted by Frank Roylance at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air quality
        

As I left work Friday evening I could detect a smoky aroma in the air. And looking out from The Sun's garage on Calvert Street, I noted a pretty thick haze. Maybe you got a whiff of it too, on Friday or Saturday.

Turns out, as forecast earlier in the week, we were downwind of several stubborn wildfires in eastern North Carolina and in the Great Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia. Those fires have been burning for quite a while now, and on Friday the winds finally shifted and began carrying the smoke up from the south. It eventually got all the way to New Hampshire before more wind shifts began to sweep it out over the ocean.

This sort of thing happens from time to time. Anybody else recall a weekend in 2002 when forest fires in Quebec began sending smoke wafting our way. It smelled like smokehouse in Baltimore, and the skies were noticeably beige as a result. 

And lots more probably remember the smokey stump dump fire in Clarksville 10 years ago this month, and another in Baltimore County that began in 1992, sent smoke drifting across the city, burned for 18 months and cost $3 million to control.  

Anyway, here's how the NC and VA fires looked Saturday, from NASA's orbiting Aqua Earth Observing satellite. They're still burning. I suspect vacationers on the Outer Banks are pretty sick of the smell. Anybody reading this on the OBX?

Posted by Frank Roylance at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Air quality
        

Measurements of air pollutants over the North Pacific have documented one of Asia's biggest exports - air pollution. A NASA study has concluded that some 40 billion pounds of aerosols - smoke, ash, and acid droplets from forest fires, coal stoves, automotive and industrial exhaust  - drifted out across the Pacific between 2002 and 2005. About 10 billion pounds of that reached North America.

That incoming pollution is about 15 percent the volume of the pollution we generate ourselves. The study's lead author, Hongbin Yu, of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, said, “This is a significant percentage at a time when the U.S. is trying to decrease pollution emissions to boost overall air quality. This means that any reduction in our emissions may be offset by the pollution aerosols coming from East Asia and other regions.” Yu is an assistant research scientist at UMBC, currently working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Satellites have tracked the pollution during its journey from East Asia and Russia, and provided scientists with data for their estimates of the volume and contents of the brown clouds. Rapid industrial growth in China has made matters worse, the study found.

Here's how it looked to the satellite's instruments on one day in 2003. You can read all about it here.

Posted by Frank Roylance at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air quality