As fires and weather events become more frequent, more intense and longer lasting, they are not without risk to air quality.
Heat waves, fires, floods... Not to mention the shortages of drinking water and all those crops that went up in smoke. This summer, extreme events have accumulated. In France as in the rest of the world. The climate has invited itself to vacation destinations, accelerating awareness of the urgent need to move towards greater sobriety. And we can only rejoice because the air we breathe is becoming more and more unbreathable every day.
This is what the annual Air Quality and Climate Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) suggests. Published on September 7, the 2022 edition focused on the short-term impact of smoke from forest fires, which increased from North America to Siberia in 2020. Not surprisingly, these "mega fires" have led to a considerable increase in fine particulate matters (PM 2.5). But that is not the main lesson of the report.
Even more interesting is the mutually reinforcing dynamic between pollution and global warming uncovered by the UN's specialized agency. Under the effect of a phenomenon called "climate backlash", global warming amplifies the production of ozone at ground level to the detriment of the air we breathe. And, incidentally, the health of millions of people. The "climatic backlash" will be felt more in the regions located mainly in Asia and home to a quarter of the world's population.
If the WMO is alarmist for the health of people and ecosystems, one might be tempted to qualify its projections. After all, don't we spend 90% of our time indoors ? But as cosy as our apartments are, the air in them is five to seven times more polluted than in the street. This is enough to worry about our health and that of future generations. Here as elsewhere in the world. Unless we act. What can we do? By aiming for carbon neutrality to limit the number of extreme episodes of air pollution by ozone and by equipping ourselves with devices to clean up the air in our living or working spaces.
Marianne Fougère
