In a new study, atmospheric researchers MIT show how smoke particles released by wildfires unleash a chemical chain reaction that decimates the ozone, creating another problem exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
While wildfires don’t release CFCs, wildfire smoke carries chemicals into the atmosphere that react with other atmospheric compounds to produce chlorine compounds. In chemical reactions with volcanic eruptions, wet volcanic aerosols react with nitrogen-based chemicals floating around in the stratosphere.
As these chemical reactions proceed free-floating in the stratosphere, the number of nitrogen species decreases and the number of chlorine ones increase, Solomon said. As a result, they end up destroying the ozone layer. To test whether this was likely the same in the case of the Australian wildfires, Solomon and her team checked out nitrogen dioxide levels dropped around the time of the wildfires. Multiple instruments verified they had, including one that indicated nitrogen dioxide values were at the lowest in 20 years during the fires.
Furthermore, Solomon and her team built a model of atmospheric chemistry that seemed to strongly suggest the decrease in nitrogen dioxide was only really possible as a result of wildfire smoke—no other variable could account for what the satellite data showed. Solomon acknowledged that while the chemical behavior exhibited by wildfire smoke may not be the whole story—there could be other chemical reactions contributing in tandem—she said her team’s findings show “that the behavior of these [smoke particles] with regard to nitrogen dioxide is very similar to what occurs on volcanic particles.” Solomon and her group plan to extend their findings to examine the impact of other recent wildfires, like those in California, on the ozone.
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