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Climate Cast ®
Paul Huttner

Climate change, some bad weather luck behind Minnesota's smoky summer

Smoke from wildfires causes thick haze in the sky
The buildings of downtown St. Paul are shrouded in haze caused by smoke from wildfires in Canada on July 29 as seen from the High Bridge in St. Paul. The day brought the worst air quality on record in Minnesota.
Andrew Krueger | MPR News

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Wildfire smoke is in our eyes, our lungs and the news this summer.

Last Thursday, it was literally off the charts on Minnesota’s air quality monitors, which put 300 micrograms per cubic meter at the high end of the “very unhealthy” category. Particulate matter reached 422 micrograms in St. Cloud.

And where there’s smoke, there are fingerprints of climate change. Data from Climate Central shows the number of large wildfires has tripled in the west since 1970, and the number of air quality alerts in Minnesota is rising fast.

Matt Taraldsen, a meteorologist with the Risk Evaluation and Air Modeling Unit at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said Minnesota typically sees a few air quality alerts a year. This year, it’s seen nine.

“What we’re seeing this year could very well be what we’re going to start seeing in the future,” Taraldsen said. “But there have to be a couple things that happen. One, we have to have a busy wildfire season. That’s not a given but something we would expect more of with a changing climate. On top of that, we need to have the meteorology that allows that smoke to reach Minnesota and get down to the ground.”

Teraldsen said this year’s poor air quality has been caused by a mixture of climate change-related wildfires and some bad weather luck. This summer has been dry. Typically rain washes out the smoke before it reaches the ground.

To hear more, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.