It is a fairly rare phenomenon that Parisians have been able to observe with their own eyes. A slight veil of smoke, resulting from the important fires that occurred in Canada in Maysettled above the capital in the late afternoon. It was nevertheless thick enough to camouflage the sun, however relatively spared by the clouds this Tuesday.
“In Paris the satellite detects only a slight veil of high clouds, and yet the sun ended up almost completely disappearing under the plume of fumes linked to Canadian fires that took place more than a week ago,” notes his meteorologist Guillaume Séchet.
This recovery from the Parisian sky was expected. Nearly 200,000 hectares of forest went up in smoke During the month of May in Canada, and plumes of smoke crossed the Atlantic. Some of them were visible from France on Sunday, as in Cornillé, in Ille-et-Vilaine.
“No significant impact on air quality on the surface”
The Copernicus service for air quality monitoring (CAMS) had announced that a high concentration of carbon monoxide was to fly over Northwestern France on Tuesday, including the Paris Basin.
In Europe, “planned smoke transport should not have a significant impact on air quality on the surface, because such episodes tend to occur at high altitude,” said Copernicus. “The typical effects of these episodes are manifested by a smaller sky with red/orange sunsets,” adds the observatory.
Manitoba, state of the center of Canada, which has known its worst start to the season of fires for years due to drought, and Saskatchewan (west) said the state of emergency and evacuated thousands of inhabitants at the end of May.
The fire season could be “above normal”
“Until the beginning of June, our data show that the Central Regions of Canada experienced a few very intense weeks in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Parrington, scientific director at CAMS.
According to forecasts by Canadian authorities, the fire season could be “above normal” in the center and western Canada in June and July, and “well above average” in August, especially due to the serious or extreme drought that rages in several places.
In the rest of the world, Note Copernicus, “large forest fires have been raging in the Federal Federal District of Russia since early April”, in particular in the east of Lake Baikal, having caused the programs of “around 35 carbon megatons” in the atmosphere since early April.
