1. Impact of extreme wildfires from the Brazilian Forests and sugarcane burning on the air quality of the biggest megacity on South America.
- Author
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Souto-Oliveira CE, Marques MTA, Nogueira T, Lopes FJS, Medeiros JAG, Medeiros IMMA, Moreira GA, da Silva Dias PL, Landulfo E, and Andrade MF
- Subjects
- Brazil, Ecosystem, Mannose-Binding Protein-Associated Serine Proteases analysis, Particulate Matter analysis, Smoke analysis, Forests, Environmental Monitoring, Wildfires, Air Pollutants analysis, Saccharum, Fires, Air Pollution analysis
- Abstract
Recently, extreme wildfires have damaged important ecosystems worldwide and have affected urban areas miles away due to long-range transport of smoke plumes. We performed a comprehensive analysis to clarify how smoke plumes from Pantanal and Amazon forests wildfires and sugarcane harvest burning also from interior of the state of São Paulo (ISSP) were transported and injected into the atmosphere of the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP), where they worsened air quality and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) levels. To classify event days, multiple biomass burning fingerprints as carbon isotopes, Lidar ratio and specific compounds ratios were combined with back trajectories modeling. During smoke plume event days in the MASP fine particulate matter concentrations exceeded the WHO standard (>25 μg m
-3 ), at 99 % of the air quality monitoring stations, and peak CO2 excess were 100 % to 1178 % higher than non-event days. We demonstrated how external pollution events such as wildfires pose an additional challenge for cities, regarding public health threats associated to air quality, and reinforces the importance of GHG monitoring networks to track local and remote GHG emissions and sources in urban areas., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Carlos Souto-Oliveira reports financial support was provided by State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)- Published
- 2023
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