Wildfires in the western United States, such as the one pictured earlier this year in Los Angeles, have contributed to global warning, according to researchers. Photo via Los Angeles County Fire Department/UPI | License Photo
Wildfires are an increasingly common feature of life in American West, and researchers are working overtime to understand how the resulting smoke affects air quality, human health and climate change.
"Wildfires do not emit ozone directly," Jan Mandel, a professor emeritus of mathematics at University of Colorado Denver, said in a news release. "Wildfire smoke contains chemical compounds that react with sunlight to produce ozone, often far from the fire itself."
In turn, that added ozone fuels global warming.
Mandel developed a computer model to gauge the air quality effects of large western wildfires that ripped across the West in 2020.
